Rise
by wenwenwrites
Summary: Seven years after the Sandaime Hokage's assassination, a group of children are dragged into the war for the homes they barely remember. In which Kakashi is forced to the forefront of yet another war, Itachi is given to maudlin internal monologues, Shisui alternates between coping and dissociating, and Zabuza wonders why he couldn't have left the honor to the fucking samurai.
1. Chapter 1

RISE

Full summary:

The rise of Dai-nana-han in a very different but very familiar world (as told by everyone around them, and sometimes themselves).

They ran, and they grew up running, but fleeing wasn't in their nature. Fighting was. A ragged group of children are recruited in the war to take back the homes they barely remember.

What is loyalty? What is duty? When do your friends and enemies become your brothers and sisters, and what happens when your family and your nation falls apart? The Sandaime Hokage's assassination sent shockwaves through the Elemental nations; in the aftermath, several important chess pieces went missing: 1) the Heirs; 2) the Seal; 3) the Successor.

In which Itachi is given to maudlin internal monologues, Shisui alternates between coping and dissociating, and Zabuza wonders why he couldn't have left the honor to the fucking samurai.

Canon setting, canon timeline in an alternate universe that runs parallel to and touches on original events.

* * *

CHAPTER 1: Itachi Mopes And Is Regretfully A Little Impolite To His Partner In Crime

He would apologize, but then the cold and mysterious image he's cultivating would be ruined.

* * *

MISSION REPORT: D-0

0124 HOURS reported breach of walls. Multiple assailants, origins unknown.

Operative Cat-15 on standby.

0132 HOURS headquarters received reports of heavy assault on targets: Hokage Tower; Uchiha Compound; Hyuuga Compound; Inuzuka Compound; Sarutobi Compound, Lower Market District, West Gate.

0138 HOURS Protocol 73-I initiated.

Cat-15 deployed to escort high-risk targets from Hyuuga Compound to Rendezvous Point E-7 (RPE7)

Arrived at Hyuuga Compound.

Primary target Hyuuga Hinata located with escort Hyuuga Neji, unranked.

Secondary target Hyuuga Hanabi located with escort Hyuuga Makoto, chuunin.

Both targets secured. Proceeded to RPE7 via East Gate.

Ambushed in forest en route to rendezvous, 2km N 1km E of RPE7.

4 assailants killed. 1 casualty, Hyuuga Makoto.

0357 HOURS arrived at RPE7, initiated lockdown. Both targets secure.

Awaiting all-clear.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

* * *

At the seasoned and jaded age of thirteen, Uchiha Itachi had seriously considered only a few possible ways his life might go.

However, life as a shinobi of course meant one had to expect the unexpected. Life and death, war and peace balanced delicately on the edge of a kunai. A village could be born or simply cease to exist overnight.

But honestly? Itachi had always known he'd live and die as a loyal shinobi of the Leaf. Whether as Anbu, Clan head, or simply a jounin (because there had been no doubt in anyone's mind that he'd reach jounin rank, though he'd on occasion wondered if he'd reach as high as the Kage hat itself) he would die in the service of Konoha.

And now, at the considerably wiser and worldlier age of fifteen, Itachi could safely say that his thirteen-year-old self would never have thought he'd be ever be a fugitive sitting down to a cup of tea within the same boundaries of the nation he'd sworn his life to. And especially not with his present company.

Across from him, the ex-Swordsman of the Mist treated him to a pointy-toothed grin over a gently steaming cup of green tea. "Hi no Kuni ain't so bad," he drawled, tapping a large finger along the edge of his cup. The fragile white porcelain looked almost absurd next to his calloused hands.

"Hm," Itachi responded absently, letting his eyes drift outside the bijou tea shop. Rain was pouring down in steady sheets, cloaking the town in a hazy mist and churning the mud into a gritty slop. The villagers went about their business with ducked heads and plodding steps, huddled into their clothes for warmth or protection.

"I mean," the man across from him continued undeterred by Itachi's non-answer, "the sun, when we first got here? That fuckin' sucked. But this?" he waved a hand carelessly at the rain-splattered storefront. "I can get on board with this." He threw back the tea in his cup in one go like it was a shot, heedless of its heat, and thumped it back down on the table with a satisfied sigh.

It must be the rain, Itachi decided detachedly, that was making the normally taciturn nuke-nin so talkative, when none of them really felt the need to talk at all. He eyed the other man blandly, who had reached gracelessly across the table to pour himself a refill. Ruthless, twisted, and a killer without a village to hold his loyalty. But weren't they all, in the end?

Itachi lifted his own cup to his lips for a sip. The tea here really was excellent. A strong flavour without being overwhelmingly bitter - the perfect drink for a rainy day. It helped that the innocuous teahouse was located on the edge of the village center, really just a few bigger buildings and a sizeable market. Close enough to any action that might occur, far enough to serve as a vantage point with several viable escape routes. A good vantage point always made his tea taste better.

He listened with half an ear as his partner picked up a new thread - the criminal lack of fresh fish - when he caught a glimpse of light on metal. He paused, gave the man with the Konoha hitai-ate a discreet once-over as he walked past the teahouse. Itachi set his cup down gently, tapped it twice with two fingers as the man passed out of his sightline.

Any halfway mediocre ninja knows better than to turn and look and obviously Kiri's elite would be no different, but a slight narrowing at the corner of his eyes was clue enough to Itachi that the other man had a lock on their target. His stream of rather one-sided conversation continued uninterrupted, however, and only petered out with a grumbled "...what a man has to do to get some decent goddamn sashimi around here," when Itachi fished a few coins out of his pocket and placed them on the tabletop.

Itachi rose smoothly, mirroring his partner, and followed as the other man lumbered out of the booth in a gross contrast to his usual hunter's prowl.

Which he was, which both of them were - hunters.

There weren't many ways for a nuke-nin to be at least semi-legally quasi-employed, and generally the more illegal methods of earning money (robbing and/or looting) tended to attract substantially more unwanted attention. So for now, they hunted down bounties and turned them in.

Itachi's first step out of the teahouse sank him ankle-deep into cold, sodden mud. He slogged onwards, glaring dispassionately at the ground as he trailed his partner through the streets. The rain had not let up, but the wide-brimmed hats that helped hide their faces also kept the water from their heads so they were reasonably dry.

He hadn't yet caught sight of their target after he'd passed by their teahouse, but he could easily find him again if they'd lost him - it'd just mean a couple hours longer in the rain and mud. He really preferred that they didn't, but more mistakes were made by ninja in a hurry and Itachi had not been sloppy since he was six and sliced his finger on a shuriken during target practice. So they'd take their time and when they'd caught their prey and retreated to headquarters, Itachi would resist the urge to moan and complain the way his partner did when they did missions in Suna.

Fortunately, the other man in question walked purposefully despite meandering through the muddy streets. In fact, there was a restrained glee as he waded through the mud that had nothing to do with the weather - more the thrill of a shark who'd caught the scent of blood. Ten meters later, Itachi's eyes caught his partner's hands flick two signals, lightning fast.

There was no need to discuss now, only the rhythmic tap-tap-tap of the rain between them now. No questions this far in the mission, only trust that the other would do their part. Itachi peeled off to the right, into the narrow alley between two grocery markets, and after a quick glance behind him, leaped straight up to land lightly on one of the roofs. He cut south, leaping easily from building to building while keeping low on slippery straw and tile alike. Finally, he perched on the roof of a bakery to wait, half-obscured by the steam puffing up from the vents. From there he had an excellent line of sight to the motel room where a Konoha team, sans one, huddled to take shelter from the rain.

It would be so easy.

He knew who they were, faces in files, abilities and other details listed dispassionately in paper and ink. None of them were a match for him. The three of them together would hardly give him a workout, especially not with them unawares and isolated.

"Those who kill their own comrades are sure to die a terrible death," he remarked absently to his partner.

"Sure, kid." The other man wasn't grinning his usual shark-toothed smile, but there was an air of satisfaction and a limp, incredibly bloody body slung over his shoulder. "We good here?"

"No movement. His team will not know that we have him." Itachi turned to eye the other man critically. "Assuming you do not leave them a blood trail to follow. Get it cleaned up and meet me at the north road out of town."

"There's rain, it'll wash away," grumbled the older man, rolling his eyes, but vanished off the roof the way he'd come nevertheless.

Itachi cast a last glance at the motel window before dropping lightly off the roof. He took his time, wandering through the town, and by the time he reached the road leading out of town his partner was already there, this time with a slightly-less-suspicious oversized rucksack hanging off one shoulder.

Without a word, Itachi took the lead, sprinting into the cover the forest offered. Here, away from the town, his movements melted back into their easy grace, strong and surefooted as he pointed them back towards base. Even burdened, his companion kept up easily.

"Boss wanna ask this one a couple questions?" he asked, not winded in the slightest.

"Yes," Itachi answered shortly.

An expectant silence followed. Itachi, not feeling especially charitable, did not indulge it.

The silence turned somewhat resentful, but Itachi had no wish to speak of anything until the pair were safely out of Hi no Kuni, even though they had not ventured more than half a day's run inside the borders to begin with. He may feel safe in the trees, but Konoha shinobi were at home up in the branches as well. It left the pair in a prime position to be ambushed.

He kept his senses on high alert, steering them away from the routes commonly patrolled and the paths returning teams favoured when travelling to and from the Hidden Village. The patrols were easy enough to evade. Even when there was no set schedule, there was always a pattern to find, and those patterns were high priority for him to keep up to date with. It was the teams returning from outside missions he was more concerned with.

Moreover, his partner was much less one for subtlety and much more for kill first, questions later. Itachi didn't doubt they could handle any individual team that stumbled upon them, save perhaps an Anbu task force if it surprised them, but he disliked unnecessary casualties. Additionally, the disappearance of a team known to be within Fire's borders would doubtlessly attract attentions, which they needed to avoid.

They ran until dawn, when the rain petered out and the sun's warm glow could be seen between the trees. The border for Hi no Kuni disappeared rapidly behind them; they'd deftly slipped between two border patrols with neither the wiser.

Itachi stopped in a small copse of trees and stood patiently. He could hear the rush of the swollen river twenty meters ahead, and his partner's labored pants as he dropped his burden from his shoulder with a careless thud.

Moments later, a narrow white muzzle nosed its way through the undergrowth. Its owner emerged fully from the bushes, stared at the pair, and turned. Itachi followed, and with much waspish muttering, so did his partner.

"Caught you a live one," growled the older man, ducking into the cave after Itachi and tossing the sack to the ground. He folded his arms belligerently and glowered as if it had done him some personal insult. Itachi couldn't relate, but then again he hadn't been the one dragging it across two countries.

From his seat on the ground, beside which lay a pile of unsharpened kunai, Kakashi regarded the two calmly. The hound they'd followed in, Uhei, settled comfortably by his master's feet. "Report," Kakashi directed at Itachi, even as his hands resumed their task with a whetstone and a blade.

"Hai," Itachi responded. Zabuza shifted impatiently behind him, but he ignored the other nuke-nin. "We arrived in Iitate six days ago and established ourselves as travellers en route to Kawa no Kuni. Two days after our arrival, the team from Konoha arrived as expected. One jounin, Fukada Juro. Three chuunin; Haga Riko, Sekiguchi Yori, Tabata Minoru. Fukada remained with at least one of his team for two days, but on the third he left his team and made his way across town to the informant's location. I watched the remaining team while Zabuza-san -"

"I took him out behind the butcher shop," the Swordsman cut in gruffly, not-quite-glaring at Kakashi. "Didn't give him a chance to use ninjutsu or genjutsu. Hit him around. Cut him up a bit. Knocked him out. Tied him up. Met back up with Itachi."

"The teammates were unaware of what happened," Itachi continued. "We departed the village at 1000 hours yesterday."

The grey-haired nin eyed the body dubiously. "He'll survive?"

"Long enough," Zabuza grunted.

"The informant?"

"None the wiser," Itachi answered smoothly.

Kakashi nodded sharply. "Good work. Get some rest; I'll take care of this one."

"Hai, taichou." Itachi moved past Kakashi, deeper into the cave. The glint in Kakashi's eye was one he'd learned the be wary of - even Zabuza behind him, with all his bravado and tendency towards alpha-dog posturing, followed him quietly, subdued.

Zabuza would never take orders from someone weaker than him. Unfortunately for him, he hadn't managed to best Itachi once in a spar. The ex-Swordsman hadn't been deterred. "Next time," he'd always growl around a bloody grin and the bruises mottling his bare skin. That, at least, was something Itachi admired about him.

He rounded the bend, and a figure emerged from the shadows thrown by the solitary lantern. "Itachi-san. Zabuza-san!"

Itachi inclined his head. "Haku-san," he greeted, then turned away to find his bedroll.

"Hey, kid," the Swordsman said behind him. "I hope you practiced that ice senbon."

"Hai!" Itachi could practically hear the younger shinobi beaming. "I was able to extend my range to ten meters before the ice begins to crumble."

"Hn." The nuke-nin didn't sound impressed, but Itachi sensed his grudging approval. "I want that tripled by next week."

"Hai, Zabuza-san."

Zabuza grunted dismissively. "All right, shut up and keep watch. I need some sleep."

As always, Itachi gathered his bedroll to the far corner of the cave, adjacent to the tunnel leading out. No sooner had he settled then a pair of quiet pawsteps padded towards him. A cold nose nudged the tips of his fingers and vanished, and a second small body situated itself at his knees.

It took a month of sleeping in the same room for Itachi to stop startling awake at any slight movement with just Kakashi and his ninken, and now sleep was even longer in coming as he lay not five meters from two nukenin from the village with the bloodiest history, who had willingly slaughtered their own comrades.

But slowly, grudgingly, the other nuke-nin were becoming part of the team.

Ah, what would his mother think of him now? Hunting shinobi from his own village with a team of nuke-nin who had turned against theirs as well? Itachi had chosen peace, but Konoha had fallen into war anyways.

All he could do now was live, and hope that one day it would be safe to return home.

* * *

Shisui woke him six hours later, dripping rainwater unhappily onto the stone floor. Zabuza and Haku were both gone, but in the dim glow of the lantern he could make out the shapes of Bisuke and Guruko sprawled at his feet, bodies rising and falling slowly.

"Shisui." Itachi's voice was rough with sleep, but he hauled himself into a sitting position mercilessly.

"Ohaiyo, Itachi," Shisui smiled crookedly. "Good mission?"

"Aa," he confirmed. "No complications."

His cousin raised an expectant eyebrow. "And?"

Itachi scowled faintly, an expression only those close to him would recognize. "...the weather was unpleasant," he added reluctantly.

Shisui hummed in agreement. "I think the storm system caught up to you. It started raining two hours ago and hasn't let up yet." He reached up to peel his sodden hitai-ate from his head, then sent a hum of warm chakra through his body that Itachi could feel even from a meter away until he and his clothes were completely dry.

Itachi watched him retie his forehead protector, still proudly bearing an unmarred leaf symbol, and crooked to mirror Kakashi-taichou. None of them had slashed their village symbols, not even the Kiri pair. After all, it wasn't as if the civilian villages they visited would know if they were missing-nin.

His cousin would call it sentiment, but Itachi was too practical for sentimentality.

Shisui didn't feel the need to talk, especially not around Itachi. The cousins sat in companionable silence. He knew it wouldn't last; their respites never did last. One would think that not having a village would cut down greatly on responsibilities, but he couldn't be more wrong.

The two ninken sat up abruptly, startled out of dozing. Guruko wagged his tail as Kakashi strode into view, trailed by two other dogs. "Itachi, supply run," he said without preamble, tossing a scroll to the teen. "And turn in the bounty for Fukuda-san while you're at it; I believe Iwa has the highest reward at present. I'll be leaving in the morning for ten days or so with Pakkun and Bisuke. Shisui, you're in charge while I'm away. Give Zabuza another day to rest, then send him and Haku to check on their contacts in Kusa."

"Hai," murmured Itachi, echoed by Shisui.

The older man nodded at them, then turned away to find his own sleeping roll, shadowed by his ninken. "Uhei caught a couple rabbits, if you're hungry," he tossed over his shoulder.

Shisui heaved himself up with a sigh. "I'll get some food cooked, then. Itachi? Taichou?"

"That would be appreciated," Itachi responded, rising gracefully to his feet.

Kakashi waved a hand at them. "I'm fine."

Shisui scowled at the older man, who had already bundled himself into his blankets under a pile of dog. "I'll save some for you, Hatake-taichou. Eat it when you get up," he said pointedly, and whirled out of sight before he could respond.

Amused, Itachi found his sandals and slung his discarded cloak over his shoulders before following his cousin to the mouth of the cave. Uhei was already there, his narrow tail thumping the floor in interest as Shisui built up a small stack of wood and spat a tiny flame at it. It took a couple tries to light up; the wood was damp.

Once he had a small if smoky fire going, the hound dropped a large rabbit in Shisui's lap with a wolfish grin and was rewarded with an ear rub. The dog was clearly already sated, if the traces of red around his mouth and round stomach were any clue. There were two other rabbits by his paws.

"Make sure we don't suffocate?" Shisui suggested as he pulled out a kunai.

"Aa," Itachi acquicised, folding his hands into a sign and breathing out slowly. The smoke gathering at the ceiling drifted out, dispersed into the air outside rather than trailing skyward in a single column. He kept it up as he watched his cousin shuck and gut the rabbits with sure hands before throwing them into a pot with water, a handful of tubers, and salt.

Maybe twenty meters out, he could feel the chakra signatures of Zabuza and Haku - both muted, but the former still and steady while the latter flitted and fluctuated. Aside from them, the forest was calm and silent.

The nearest village was four hours running, and hardly anyone travelled through this patch of woods. Still, Itachi hadn't relaxed, not truly, since he'd left Konoha. He'd taken the protection of the village for granted, he knew now.

"Ryo for your thoughts?" Shisui cut in, quirking an amused eyebrow. He covered the pot with its lid and sat back.

Itachi shook his head dismissively. There was no use dwelling on useless musings. His cousin narrowed his eyes disbelievingly but didn't press.

Uhei's ears pricked, swivelled in the direction of the forest for a moment before the hound relaxed again. Zabuza and Haku emerged, the former bleeding his customary languid grace, the latter with a flush belying the exhilaration he tried to hide beneath a proper shinobi's nonchalance.

The other teen was just a few years younger than Itachi, yet Haku was still innocent enough to find excitement in training, to delight in his own capabilities and marvel at what he could accomplish. In him, Itachi remembered Sasuke's eager eyes and drive to learn.

"Good morning," the younger shinobi greeted politely as they approached. Zabuza graced them each with a brusque nod before brushing past, but Haku didn't follow.

Itachi tilted his head inquisitively when Haku fidgeted, twisting his fingers into his sleeve.

"Itachi-san, I - I was wondering if you might like to spar with me?" he asked hopefully, eyes bright despite the fact that his hair had been all but plastered to his head.

Purposefully shoving aside the invasively bittersweet memories that threatened to come to the forefront, Itachi glanced over at Shisui, who made a lazy shooing motion with one hand. "I can handle the fire without you," his cousin reassured, mouth twitching in an amused smirk.

"Aa." Itachi rose to his feet and nodded to Haku. "Lead the way, Haku-san."

He caught the tail end of a genuine smile before Haku turned, haori fluttering, and leapt back out of the cave mouth. Itachi ghosted out after him with silent, sure footsteps and followed him to the same clearing he'd sensed his and Zabuza's chakra before.

The rain was coming down as though he'd never left Iitate, hampered only slightly by the leaves and branches overhead. Itachi bore it with a grim stoicness, walking lightly on top of the mud.

"Would taijutsu only be alright with you, Itachi-san?" Haku asked as Itachi slipped out of his cloak.

"Acceptable, yes," he answered, beginning a few stretches to warm up muscles gone stiff in the cold, damp cave. "Do you wish to include tools in combat?"

"If that's okay with you?"

It was difficult to dislike Haku, who was always unfailing polite and painfully earnest. He was the one who made an effort to connect to the Konoha shinobi, always helpful and friendly - and he meant it. Where Zabuza was suspicious and spurned friendly overtures, Haku was open, and as far as he could tell, honest. Doubtlessly those qualities made him all the more deadly when he turned around as a killer with empty eyes and a fistful of ice, but he was pleasant as a teammate.

"Aa, that's fine with me," he answered, turning to face Haku. Immediately, he ducked under the trio of senbon hurtling towards his head, neatly sidestepped a kick, and gave Haku an open-handed shove behind the shoulder to propel him past when the younger boy lunged.

Haku was fast, but not as fast as Itachi had been at thirteen - at least, not without his Hyoton.

Even so, he recovered quickly, and Itachi jerked back as Haku's roundhouse kick displaced the air in front of his face. Two steps back out of the way of the continued onslaught, then he whipped out a kunai in time to deflect Haku's senbon with a loud clang.

The younger's eyes were alight and focused, intent on Itachi as he whirled in and then away. Itachi pressed his advantage, following Haku's retreat with a hurled kunai that the other twisted to avoid. He lashed out with a kick that Haku ducked, spun around with the momentum in time to block a punch and exchanged a flurry of blows before landing a kick that sent the younger teen skidding back in the mud.

Itachi didn't push this time, instead using the respite to draw another two kunai. Haku sprang from his crouch to meet him, three senbon spouting from each hand like claws.

They met in a clash of metal, and Itachi took advantage of his superior strength to bear down on the Haku. The younger twisted hard with one hand, and rather than allow his kunai to be torn from his grip, Itachi turned with it, flipping sideways, and yanked their locked blades towards himself when his feet touched the ground.

Haku didn't allow himself to be yanked forwards; instead, he let one of his senbon take the brunt of the force, and it was sent flying off to the side as he leapt after Itachi. Itachi evaded neatly, ducking under Haku's arm and landing a twisting kick to throw him back a couple steps.

He sent one kunai spinning at Haku, then the other, but each was met by a senbon and both deflected off harmlessly to the sides. But it was enough to give him an opening.

Itachi pounced with the finesse of a panther, one hand catching Haku's wrist before he could hurl his senbon, the other smoothly drawing a kunai and pressing it to Haku's throat in one swift movement.

For a few seconds they froze, a tableau grossly contrasting the veritable blur they had been just a few moments prior, and then Itachi let go and stepped back, slipping the blade back into its holster.

Haku straightened, his hair sopping wet and in slight disarray, and his clothes splattered with mud. "Again?" he requested, eyes sparkling with anticipation.

Itachi considered, blinking the rain out of his eyes. "Aa," he consented, and then they were off again.

Itachi enjoyed combat in that it was simple. Straightforward. He did not desire to injure his opponents, but there was a sort of satisfaction to be gained from his mastery of his own body, his chakra, validated not simply by emerging victorious, but from the knowledge that hours of hard work and endless dedication had indeed paid off. Sparring was a different chessboard from the politics of everyday life, and Itachi had enough control that he could afford to relax his mind during a match.

He had never been a denier of reality, but afforded himself the luxury of a brief escape every now and then - though he was careful to curb his speed and reflexes. Despite their cordial interactions, Itachi would be a fool to display anything near his full abilities, and a greater fool to assume Haku would either.

But as long as their arrangement remained beneficial for the two ex-Kiri nin - and so long as Zabuza's strange sense of honor remained intact - Itachi knew he could generally trust the two at his back in battle. And no matter how ironically Zabuza called Kakashi 'Boss,' Itachi amused himself by noting that they were growing on the Swordsman, so to speak.

Just the other day, he'd abruptly and somewhat begrudgingly shared with Kakashi a jutsu that could keep his mask (or bandages, in Zabuza's case) dry for a long period of time without a constant drain of chakra, to the copy-nin's slight bemusement. And he was finally allowing Haku alone with the other members of their team without his supervision, when in the beginning he'd glower and skulk in the shadows every time Haku so much as looked in someone else's direction.

As far as Itachi could tell, allowing him to spar with his apprentice alone was the pinnacle of a trust display, for all that Zabuza insisted Haku was simply another tool in his belt.

Itachi managed to pin Haku another handful of times before he called a halt. The younger nin's chest was heaving slightly with exertion, and his face was flushed. Itachi himself was still quite fresh, but Haku had been training already while he slept, and he certainly didn't need Zabuza to scowl at him for the next week if he returned his apprentice half-dead from exhaustion. Especially if Haku caught a cold - both their clothes were heavy and soaked through from the downpour, and he would be shivering if he hadn't been moving about.

"Thank you for the spar, Itachi-san," Haku said, bowing slightly.

Itachi inclined his head. "It was no trouble," he replied, and meant it.

While Haku retreated back to the cave, Itachi detoured to the river to bathe and clean his clothes, flecked with mud and sodden plant matter. The rain was cold, but the river was glacial. Itachi bathed quickly, sending shocks of warm chakra through his body to combat the freezing waters. He dried his clothes the same way as best as possible, then made his way back to their headquarters.

Inside the cave, Shisui and Uhei had been joined by the hulking Bull, whom the former was currently using as a backrest. He hummed a greeting as Itachi approached, sending one last burst of chakra to dry his clothes once he was out of the rain.

The small fire was out now, the pot nestled in the glowing coals of its remains. Itachi met Shisui's eyes and tilted his head towards it inquiringly.

"It's ready," Shisui confirmed. "I thought we'd wait for you to get back. Haku's getting the bread."

Itachi frowned slightly. "You didn't need to."

His cousin shrugged, a careless smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "We didn't mind. Haku didn't think you'd be long. We're not waiting for Kakashi, in any case."

"I imagine if we waited for taichou, we would have to call it breakfast," Itachi deadpanned, and was gratified to see Shisui smirk.

"The disrespect. He'd be heartbroken if he heard you."

They ate their stew in trenchers made of stale bread that Zabuza bought it in Iitate sometime before completing their mission (possibly because Zabuza had a soft spot for the ninken, who loved gnawing on the used trenchers). And they still hadn't replaced the metal set lost when Kakashi used the storage scroll they were sealed in as a decoy to steal a scroll out from under the noses of a Kumo team. Itachi made a mental note to look for replacements during his supply run.

Zabuza and Haku sat on the dusty floor across from him and Shisui, the pot of rabbit stew between them. Uhei had since migrated to the Kiri-nins' side, as he had found out early on that Haku was more than willing to give him the pets and ear rubs that Kakashi claimed would spoil his hounds rotten.

They didn't talk while they ate, but the silence was considerably more comfortable than the first few tension-charged weeks of their cohabitation. As ever, the stew was nowhere near filling enough for three teenagers and a grown man - especially not shinobi - but it was at least more satisfying than the dry, tasteless nutrition bars they ate otherwise.

Kakashi breezed out with a pair of ninken at his heels when Itachi was finishing up and Zabuza had pulled out his sword and an oiled cloth for maintenance. He was dressed for travel already, with a plain brown travel cloak over a battered flak jacket and a pack slung over one shoulder.

Shisui intercepted him with a trencher already filled with stew before Kakashi could make it out of the cave. Kakashi glanced at the food, then Shisui's expectant face before taking it, slouching against the wall to eat.

And because Kakashi was Kakashi, he turned his head away to eat, to Zabuza's disappointed interest.

By the time Itachi departed for Iwa, the sun would have been bleeding out over the trees if it hadn't been for the persistent rain. Instead, a light grey glow settled with the mist in between the trees as he leapt from branch to branch. Beside him ran the winsome Shiba, whose companionship on the trip Itachi had apparently won when he'd given the ninken his bread trencher.

Itachi had never considered himself a 'dog person,' not with his clan's frequent contracts with the ninneko. But since Itachi joined the team, Kakashi's ninken had always been forward in a way that their summoner was not, nosing up to all five teammates with blatant disregard for personal space and an ineffable affability. Even Akino, the most aloof of the pack, would randomly wander up and simply sprawl on his side near Zabuza, which Shisui for some reason found hilarious.

As friendly as the ninken were, however, and excluding their apparent leader Pakkun, they never spoke to anyone except Kakashi though Itachi knew for certain that each was capable of it. Around the other members of the team, they simply behaved like, well, dogs. Ninja dogs, but still dogs.

Itachi eyed Shiba out of the corner of his eye. The ninken grinned at him, tongue lolling from his mouth. The company, albeit unusual, was comforting.

While Itachi had never been especially...social, his sense of loneliness had increased exponentially since he'd left Konoha. At least in the village he'd had his comrades, his parents, and his clan. Until he, well. The less he thought about that, the better.

Most of all, he missed Sasuke. Was he happy? Was he even alive? He wished he had taken his brother when he fled.

The sun had set and risen again by the time Itachi and Shiba reached Oshino, a small town in Iwa inhabited only by civilians save for a rickety bounty office. It would be at this office that Itachi turned in Fukada's body, but first, he checked in a room at the local motel. He was in no rush and had stopped only once along the way to rest and eat.

Shiba had wandered off as soon as they entered town. The ninken undoubtedly had his own reconnaissance to perform, and association with a shinobi would grant him unwelcome suspicion should there be another visiting shinobi among the civilian inhabitants. He would find Itachi again when he was ready, but until then he was unbothered should the dog to do as he wished. Itachi set traps at the door and window, then let himself collapse into the sagging bed. It had been a long journey.

When he next opened his eyes, the sun had passed its zenith. Here, there was no trace of the clouds that had dogged Hi no Kuni or the hideout, and when he made his way down to the street he was greeted by clear blue skies and a warm breeze. Incongruous in the henge of a middle-aged man in a sturdy, worn cloak, Itachi observed the bustle of the town from a table at a noodle shop. Picking placidly at his meal, he watched with some amusement as Shiba trotted into view, whining hopefully at a pair of boys holding meat skewers.

Neither boy proved willing to cede their meal to an ostensible stray, and took off giggling towards the residential part of town. Itachi let a smile tug the corner of his mouth as Shiba drooped in disappointment, thwarted. He paid the bill, snagging a bit of leftover chicken in his hand, and strode over to the ninken, who glanced up with a wagging tail.

"Incorrigible," he told the dog, who eagerly licked the food from his palm and snuffled happily. In the span of an afternoon, Shiba had somehow managed to find enough dirt that his light coat now was speckled with brown, and for all appearances he was just another stray begging for scraps on the streets.

A passerby chuckled, shaking his head. "You'll never get rid of 'im now," the man warned with a good-natured grin. "Mutts around 'ere, feed 'em once and they never forget you."

"Ah," Itachi feigned sheepishness, glancing down at the ninken's wolfish grin. "Is that so?" And thus Shiba had reason to follow him back to the hotel, though the dog stayed skulking in the shadows while Itachi went up.

In his room, he dropped the henge and retrieved the scroll containing Fukada Juro's body. A sighting of him in Iwa would keep Konoha's current leadership wary and guessing if word of his presence ever got back there; if not, there was no harm done in garnering a reputation even here.

Scroll in hand, Itachi stepped out of the doorway and glanced around for Shiba. Sudden movement caught his eye among the usual flow of traffic along the street, and he cast a perfunctory look at its source, a pair of dark-haired street urchins dashing across the cobblestones.

One had bandages wrapped around his eyes, towed by the hand by the the younger. And just as Itachi was turning away, the second boy turned in his direction, and Itachi caught his breath as the pair vanished into an alley.

Heedless of the annoyed grumbles of the villagers in whose paths he was standing, Itachi stood, frozen, his gaze distant as his mind worked in endless loops and possibilities and Shiba whined and nudged increasingly urgently at his hand. His mouth opened and closed around a soundless word.

* * *

Itachi's world started turning the day he held his baby brother in his arms for the first time, and he knew he would slaughter entire nations to keep him safe.

He was eleven and reeling from his cousin's death when he was took the weight of his village's future onto his shoulders.

Two years later he stood in the clan compound with the blood of the girl who had loved him on his blade, and too late he realized he had loved her too; his world was awash with crimson and black as the village came to pieces around him.

It would be another six months before they found Shisui, an empty socket where an eye used to be, and he had felt hope flutter to life.

But none of that compared to the way the world fell away completely when Itachi was fifteen, staring at the boy with his brother's face in a small civilian town in Iwa.

* * *

 **A/N: this chapter's pretty short compared to later ones, so I guess you could consider it kind of a prologue.**

 **xposted from ao3 (wenwen), more recent updates there! Also more comprehensive author's notes lol**


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Temari Is The Mom Friend We All Need In Our Lives

Single mother of seven is stressed but still doing good.

* * *

MISSION REPORT: D-2

1323 HOURS Operative Dog-4 arrived at RPE7 with high risk target Uchiha Sasuke.

Dog-4 and escort Uchiha Risuke, jounin, were assaulted en route to Rendezvous Point E-8

6 assailants killed. 1 casualty: Uchiha Risuke. Dog-4 heavily injured.

Dog-4 remained in hiding for 36 hours due to blood loss

Dog-4 took two soldier pills, rerouted to RPE7 with target.

1327 HOURS death of Dog-4 due to inflicted injuries: exsanguination, chakra depletion.

Uchiha Sasuke redesignated as Operative Cat-15's tertiary target.

1335 HOURS cadaver sealed in scroll for later burial.

1338 HOURS Cat-15 began 1km radius sweep to ensure lack of pursuit and/or discovery. Targets left in care of Hyuuga Neji.

1354 HOURS sweep concluded, no movement.

Primary and secondary targets secure.

Tertiary target secure.

No contact from HQ.

Awaiting all-clear.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

* * *

It had been over a month since Neko-sensei had last stopped by. Temari and Sai were doing inventory in the storage room of the abandoned warehouse they'd commandeered as temporary headquarters when Neji and Sasuke burst in. Sasuke was pale, eyes wide, with none of the composure he usually wore like a favorite cloak. At his side, Neji was tense, and worried enough that Temari could see none of his usual resentment.

"Someone recognized Sasuke," he said without preamble, and Temari could feel the blood draining from her own face.

She thrust her cardboard-tack-paper makeshift clipboard at Sai. "Get the others," she told him tightly, then whirled back to Neji as Sai bolted from the room. "What happened?" she snapped.

"Food run in town, near the motel. We were crossing the street when he spotted us," he answered, keeping pace with her as she hurried through the hallway. "160-170 centimeters, slight build. Long black hair kept in a ponytail. Plain dark clothes, flak jacket in Konoha style, Konoha hitae-ate, brown travelling cloak. He recognized Sasuke but didn't pursue."

"Are you sure he recognized him?" she asked, turning towards Neji, staring where she knew his eyes were beneath the bandages.

It was a testament as to how serious the situation was that Neji didn't even bristle at her questioning. "He said - "

" - otouto," Sasuke interrupted quietly, slightly behind Neji. Temari's eyes snapped to the younger boy as he continued, "he called me otouto. It was my brother, Uchiha Itachi."

There was a beat of silence when Temari couldn't think of anything to say. Neji's mouth was a grim slash across his face.

"Okay," she said at last. "Okay." She took a fortifying breath and strode through the hall into the main room, the boys at her back.

The warehouse was possibly the nicest place they'd stayed in, despite the rotting floorboards and gaping holes in the ceiling. Their main room was the largest portion of the biggest room that had a continuous roof, about five square meters, walled off from the rest by stacks of empty crates and kept meticulously clear of the broken glass and other debris that littered the floor.

Sakura and Hinata were already huddled together, but stopped their murmured conversation when Temari swept in. Sakura looked up, her eyes calm despite her pale face, but Hinata was trembling, toying nervously with the bandages over her eyes. Above them perched Gaara, silent and watchful, his agitation betrayed by the shifting sand flowing over and around his hands.

The last member of their group clattered down the stairs and into the room, barely ten seconds after Neji and Sasuke sat on overturned crates.

"We have a Code 2-Red-2," Temari said, cutting off whatever Naruto might have said before he opened his mouth with a sharp look. The blond glared back furiously, but plopped down on a crate without responding. Sai slipped in like a shadow and lurked in the makeshift entryway. "Sasuke was identified in the marketplace today. Sasuke?"

The younger boy flinched, just a twitch. "His name is Uchiha Itachi," he said, his voice monotone, and glared blankly ahead at the opposite wall. "And he's fifteen years old. Anbu, either A-rank or S-rank in most bingo books, specializes in genjutsu and ninjutsu, skilled at taijutsu and kenjutsu. Has a fully developed Sharingan."

"We don't know his affiliation," Temari said, when Sasuke didn't continue. "The intel Neko-sensei gave us suggests that he went missing-nin after That Night, but we don't know that he wouldn't try to kill us or sell us to the highest bidder."

Sasuke's eyes could have burned a hole through the crate. Naruto and Sakura exchanged a glance over his head.

"Sasuke and Neji," Temari said decisively. "Focus on evasion. You've already been spotted together, so stay together. Keep to the busier parts of town, and if he tries to take you, make as much noise as possible. Sai?" The pale boy straightened. "Give Neji the tanto."

Between the eight of them, they had three dozen kunai and one tanto, the latter of which was usually shared between Neji and Sai, who were most proficient with it. Now, Sai unclasped the somewhat battered blade and tossed it to Neji, who caught it without turning his head.

Even now, not a single protest or snide remark from Neji. What a miracle.

"Sai, you need to get a message to Neko-sensei," she continued. "Get in hiding and stay hidden, no matter what happens to the rest of us. Got it?" Sai nodded sharply, his face blank and serious. "Sakura, Gaara, go with him and keep him safe. Hinata and Naruto, you come with me for surveillance."

"Hai!" said Naruto, eyes bright with determination. Hinata nodded from the opposite side, equally resolute though her hands were trembling.

"Okay, let's go," Temari declared. "Everyone grab what you need and clear out within five minutes. Keep in touch, and hopefully I'll see you all on the other side."

It was a grim conclusion. But they'd rehearsed this before, so everyone knew what to do, at what was at stake. Most of the others immediately vanished, clattering up the stairs or down the hall to the storeroom to grab packs, clothes, weapons, or food and water. There was none of the usual cheerful chatter, and as necessary as it was Temari was sorry to be the cause.

Neji lingered, fixing a serious stare on her as he turned the sheathed tanto over in his hands.

"She'll be okay. I promise," Temari said, although she knew better than to make promises she couldn't keep.

"She should be with Sai, hiding," he said immediately. "An unsealed Byakugan makes her a vulnerable target."

"My team would be flying blind without her," countered Temari. "If you and Sasuke are taken, I need to know to get you back, or to make sure the others aren't targeted."

He looked unconvinced, a frown marring his normally impassive face. "Her life - "

"I'll take care of her," Temari said, meeting his eyes as best she could.

Neji studied her face for a second before nodding. "I entrust her safety to you," he said at last before he too vanished into the depths of the warehouse.

Temari rubbed her eyes tiredly. She honestly had too much on her plate to deal with Neji's old-fashioned sensibilities, but somehow the added responsibility weighed on her that much more.

With a whisper of shifting sand, Gaara hopped down from his perch. Automatically, Temari reached out a hand to ruffle his hair, and he leaned into it with eyes half-closed like a cat.

"You will be in danger," he said at last.

"We all will," Temari sighed.

The sand hissed, expressing his displeasure more effectively than his blank face. "I don't like this. I should protect you."

Temari carded a hand through his hair. "I need you to protect Sai," she explained patiently. "We need him to call Neko-sensei."

Gaara frowned mutinously, tilting his face up towards her. "I can protect you better than Neko-sensei," he argued.

"Maybe, but then we'd have to leave Naruto and Sasuke and everyone. Won't you miss them?" Temari cajoled.

Gaara's scowl deepened. "I can protect all of them," he insisted.

Temari sighed, guiding Gaara out so she could pack her own things. "If you kill him, people will notice. And then we have to run all the time, and Hinata will be afraid all the time, and the others won't sleep enough. You're special, Gaara, but everyone else needs to sleep or they'll be sad and hurt all the time."

He simmered, staring at the ground with narrowed eyes. "Fine," he snapped, and stormed away with clouds of sand whirling up at every step.

Temari watched him go wryly before hurrying to pack. There were seven fugitive shinobi children depending on her. Temari was only twelve, but she was strong. She would have to be enough.

She was the last one out. Everyone had vanished into the town except Naruto and Hinata, who lurked in the shadows near the wall. She summoned a weary smile for them, though of course only Naruto could see it. "Let's go," she said, reaching out to take Hinata by the hand. She followed easily, and Naruto trailed resolutely at her heels.

They had protocols for this, though they had never actually had to use them - so in theory, they knew what they were doing.

"Nee-chan," Naruto said, muffled under a battered cough mask, as they meandered towards the marketplace.

"Hmm?"

"We're going to be okay, right?" Unusually vulnerable, especially for Naruto.

"Yeah," she answered, turning towards him with a practiced smile. She squeezed Hinata's hand reassuringly for good measure. "Neko-sensei told us this would happen, remember? We just need to do as she says and everything will be fine."

Mollified, Naruto flashed her back a tentative smile and skipped up to take her other hand.

Temari repressed a flinch. Two years on the run, one of which with constant surprise ambushes, left her reluctant to have both hands occupied. But she was reluctant to shake off Naruto when she could tell he was genuinely afraid, and she certainly couldn't let go of Hinata.

At the border of Oshino's residential and market districts was a small hostel. Here, Temari let go of both their hands to knock on the door.

The welcoming smile slipped off the face of the baa-san who opened the door as she eyed their threadbare clothes and greasy hair dubiously. Acutely aware of her bedraggled appearance, the bandages covering Hinata's eyes, and the cloth mask hooked across Naruto's face, Temari beamed up at her disarmingly. "We have money," she promised, and reluctantly, the baa-san opened the door wider.

Charm, Temari had learned, was both a gift and a skill.

"Our father is a travelling merchant," she told the baa-san after she'd left Naruto and Hinata in the room the three of them would share. "He sends us money every month, but we're saving it. We want to buy a horse."

"A horse!" exclaimed the baa-san in surprise.

"Yup!" Temari dimpled. "Tou-san only has Moeru now, and she can't pull the wagon if it's too heavy. So if we get tou-san another horse, he can go places faster and carry more things!"

"Oh," said the baa-san, turning to give Temari a thoughtful glance. "Your father must be happy to have such filial children."

"I hope so," Temari agreed cheerfully. "Say, do you need help with dinner, baa-san?"

Set up with a large basket of vegetables, a knife, and a chopping board, Temari let her mind wander. When she'd first encountered the Konohan children, none of them could cook. Through her own efforts, each of them could at least boil ramen with some kind of fresh toppings, though Naruto had learned only after inflicting several large stove fires on the others, and Neji generally refused to cook anything that took more than half an hour and therefore ended up with very plain meals. Temari had learned to cook first through Academy classes, then by a private tutor which was likely in an effort to make her a more appealing bride.

"Oh, you're very good with a knife, dear," the baa-san noted, leaning over to inspect her work.

Temari glanced down in surprise, where she'd reduced the assorted vegetables to neat, thin slices. "Oh. Yes, I love to cook."

Dinner was a tomato stew with eggplant, zucchini, and onion over rice.

"Eat slowly," she told Naruto when she went to retrieve him and Hinata. "And don't eat more than two bowls. And be polite!"

"Yes, nee-chan," he said, rolling his eyes before bouncing down the stairs. "Hey, baa-san! That smells great!"

Hinata hesitated, making no move towards the stairs. Temari stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. "Any news?" she asked, her voice low.

"A-ano," Hinata began, twisting the hem of her shirt in her hands, "N-neji-nii-san and Sasuke-kun are w-walking in the m-market. N-neji says n-nobody has approached t-them yet. I c-can't see where S-sai-kun or S-sakura-chan or G-g-gaara-kun are, b-but Neji says t-they sent a message out a-already."

"So everyone's doing fine," Temari concluded, and Hinata nodded hesitantly. "Good," she said decisively. "Come down to dinner then, Hinata." She held out her hand, and Hinata took it delicately.

With the deftness of long practice, Temari guided Hinata down the stairs and had her seated before the other occupants of the hostel appeared. One man smelled faintly musty, and his clothes were finely dyed if faded around the edges: a cloth merchant. The other guests were a young couple who were clearly smitten with each other, from their frequent sideways glances and poorly hidden grins.

Naruto had helped himself already to a heaping bowl, and after a stern look from Temari, visibly restrained his normally blistering pace, mask rolled up to just above his mouth to allow him to eat. Eating would distract him from conversation, so she wouldn't need to cover up any blunders Naruto made - he was literally the worst liar she had ever met.

She filled Hinata's bowl first, then guided one of her hands to her spoon and the other to her bowl. From there, the younger girl managed on her own and Temari turned to her own meal.

Young girls didn't make conversation with strange older men, so Temari ate silently with half an eye on Naruto, who would go make conversation with strange older men if left to his own devices.

After dinner, Naruto pulled Hinata back up to their room, but Temari lingered until the other tenants had vanished.

"Baa-san," Temari said. "Do you need help with the dishes?"

The old woman beamed at her. "Oh, no, darling, you were already such a help with dinner! Run on up to your brother, and, ah, sister?"

"Ah...she's adopted," Temari explained offhandedly. "Her parents died in the same bandit attack where she was blinded, but they were close friends with my father so he took her in."

"Oh!" the baa-san cooed. "The poor dear. That's very generous of your father."

Temari dimpled, then skipped back upstairs to their room, but let the smile drop off her face the moment the door closed behind her.

Hinata, perched on the far bed, slowly unravelled the bandages around her eyes as Temari flopped onto the other bed with a sigh.

"Ne, ne, nee-chan," said Naruto from his perch on the rickety wooden table on the other side of the room.

"Hmm?" responded Temari absently, scrubbing a hand over her face.

"We're stuck here in this room and all, right? So can I practice my tree-walking?" The wood squeaked under his anticipatory bouncing. "I gotta keep training so if that bastard gets captured -"

"Naruto," Temari interrupted.

" - I can save his sorry -"

"Naruto!" Temari glared at Naruto, unimpressed, with one eye. Hinata stifled a giggle, one hand coming up to cover her mouth delicately.

Naruto grinned sheepishly, scratching the back of his head self-consciously. "Ehe, sorry?"

"Naruto," Temari paused. "What happens if you don't channel the right amount of chakra when you wall-walk?"

"I get pushed off the tree."

Temari raised an eyebrow. "And?"

"And…" Naruto's face screwed up in concentration. "I fall?"

"And?" Though it could be frustrating, he really was adorable when he tried to think his way through a puzzle. Tired as she was, Temari couldn't help but smile a little at his absent frown.

"Uhh...I blast a hole in the tree?"

"So what happens if you do that in a room?"

Naruto growled in frustration. "Argh, fine, I get it, I get it." He kicked back until he was lying flat on the table. "But, nee-chan, we have to do something ."

"We're doing everything we can," Temari sighed. "We just need to keep an eye on Neji and Sasuke, and Hinata's doing a good job with that already. Here - " she fumbled for her pack and fished out a small pad of paper, which she chucked at Naruto's head. It bounced off his forehead and he caught it with an offended squawk and flailing arms. "You can practice the leaf sticking exercise."

"You mean paper sticking exercise?" he teased, with a shadow of his usual bright grin.

Temari rolled her eyes. "Whatever, you brat. Just hurry up and practice already."

She flopped back with a sigh and turned her head to watch Hinata. The younger girl sat in seiza, hands folded neatly, and her face was serene save for the veins bulging angrily around her eyes. Temari repressed the shiver from the sheer wrongness - even after more than a year, she had yet to feel comfortable with that particular genkai-kekkei.

With a slow breath, Hinata exhaled and let the Byakugan fade from her eyes. "Neji-n-ni-san and S-sasuke-kun are s-staying in the b-basement below the n-noodle shop. But I s-still can't f-find the n-n-n-nuke-nin t-t-t-" she couldn't finish, her nervousness spilling into uncontrollable stutters before she drew in a deep breath and forcibly stilled her trembling hands.

"Did you see Sai?" Temari asked quickly.

Hinata shook her head, face falling. "He s-still isn't in my r-range. But N-neji-nii-san says h-he has s-sent out t-two waves of m-messages already."

Neko-sensei never told them where she went when she left them, so the only way of contacting her was sending out Sai's ink-animals in all directions in the hopes that at least one of them found her. "Okay. Great work, Hinata." Temari let her eyes slide shut briefly before opening them again. "Bath?" she suggested.

The two girls left Naruto in the room, papers sticking to his forehead for one or two seconds before shooting off towards the opposite wall to his disgruntled mutters.

While Hinata bathed, Temari leaned against the doorframe and closed her eyes, spreading out her senses to the rest of the house. The baa-san bustled around in the kitchen downstairs, and the other tenants moved about their own rooms, muted chakra signatures flickering faintly. Naruto's roiled a little more strongly in their room as he fought for control over his exercise.

Presently, one of the chakra signatures emerged from a room, accompanied by the squeak of a door, and Temari opened her eyes to see the young woman pad tentatively towards the bathroom, offering Temari an uncertain smile when she saw her.

Temari smiled back and knocked lightly against the bathroom door. "Ne, imouto," she said deliberately. "Are you almost done? Someone is waiting for the bathroom."

A shuffle of cloth within. "O-one more m-moment, please," floated Hinata's soft voice. After a brief pause and a whisper of chakra, the door slid open.

Hinata stood in the doorway, eyes staring blankly ahead, one hand braced against the frame of the door and the other clutching the bundle of soiled laundry at her side. Temari reached for her hand as the other guest gasped at the genjutsu of scars and cloudy eyes layered over Hinata's face. She managed a strained smile as Temari guided the younger girl back out into the hallway towards their room.

As they walked in, the paper that had reluctantly clung to Naruto's forehead blew off with a whoosh. It fluttered to the ground, joining a dozen others that surrounded him like a pile of leaves Naruto grimaced, and without looking reached over to pull another piece off the pad.

"Hey," Temari snapped. She kicked the door closed and hurled a shuriken in the same motion.

Naruto snatched his hand back just in time and turned a wounded, indignant stare on Temari. "Nee-chan, what was that for?" he whined.

"Stop wasting paper!" she scolded, scooping the loose sheets off the floor. "All you needed was one!"

Naruto pouted exaggeratedly. "But this way is faster! And you can still use that paper, anyways."

Temari mock-growled and swatted at his head with the papers. "I'm going to take a bath," she grumbled, dropping the stack on the table and retrieving her shuriken. "Then you're going to take one. And then you're going to take first watch. You better not have made a mess when I get back!"

Naruto widened his eyes innocently. "Me?"

Temari grabbed her toiletries from her bag and rolled her eyes. "Keep an eye on him, Hinata," she warned, ignoring Naruto's offended noise. Hinata ducked her head and smiled.

As a child, Temari had been a morning person. As a child however, Temari had not taken the middle night watch shift, resulting in less than six hours total of interrupted sleep. She was still growing! She was supposed to get at least eight hours of consecutive sleep a night!

She glared blearily at the window and the offending sunlight spilling into the room. She made no move to get up.

Naruto was still snoring gently on the bed behind her. However, Hinata was up and running through katas in the space in front of the beds, barefoot.

Hinata's creepy clan had a beautiful fighting style - she'd give them that, at least. She rolled over and propped her chin on folded arms to watch the younger girl. Where Neji flowed through the same katas with the coiled grace of a tiger, Hinata's movements were light and delicate, almost hesitant.

From what she could tell, Hinata was actually quite good at the Juuken - she just lacked the confidence or willingness to actually hit someone. Her cousin had no such reservations; while Temari could take Hinata down handily in a taijutsu spar, Neji beat her consistently. In an all-out fight with ninjutsu, however, Temari was confident she would come out on top. The only person in their little group that she knew could kill her without batting an eye was Gaara. And if all worked out as planned, that would never be an issue.

Naruto snuffled and tangled his legs further into his blanket. Temari twisted to grab her pillow and tossed it at the blond head. "Hey. Time to get up," she called, voice hoarse from sleep. Naruto moaned incoherently, groping for the pillow but made no other move to get up. Temari heaved herself up laboriously and flopped over onto his bed. "C'mon, up," she ordered, grabbing him in a headlock.

Predictably, Naruto squawked and flailed, and she shoved him away before he hit her in the eye. "I'm up, I'm up already!" he complained, struggling free of the sheets and sitting up. His eyes were glazed over but open, so Temari rolled off the bed and padded around Hinata to start her own morning routine.

Temari would have liked to stay holed up in the guesthouse with Naruto and Hinata until the crisis was over, but the guesthouse provided only one meal a day and the majority of their food and emergency supplies had gone with Sai's team, who intended to stay hidden at all costs.

She finished the last pushup in the set and collapsed, flopping over onto her back to stare blearily up at the cracked ceiling as she caught her breath. Flashes of Hinata's clothes whirled past her vision as the younger girl moved through her katas at double speed. Behind her, near the door, Naruto's stomach warbled plantatively.

Temari cracked a smile, pulling herself back upright. "Alright, kids. Let's get some food."

"I'm not a kid!" Naruto objected, but bounced up eagerly all the same.

Hinata relaxed her stance, and let her hands down by her sides. Her chakra pulsed, and the veins around her eyes bulged, crawling to the surface. After a moment, she released her chakra, and her eyes faded to normal. "N-neji-nii-san and Sasuke-k-kun are still i-in the b-basement across the s-street," she reported.

Temari hummed. "Good," she said, and tossed Hinata her roll of bandages. "Maybe the nuke-nin decided he was mistaken." She paused and revised. She wasn't quite that optimistic. "Maybe he decided he didn't care, or he's too busy to track down someone who might be his brother? I don't know. What do you want to eat?"

"Ramen!" Naruto crowed immediately.

Temari resisted the urge to groan. She should have expected that. "Hinata?"

"A-ano, I'm f-fine with r-ramen."

Why couldn't they like tofu or something? She sighed. "Okay. Ramen it is."

Naruto cheered, and a small smile spread across Hinata's face as she finished wrapping the bandages around her eyes, so it was almost worth it. "Put your mask on, Naruto," she ordered, and rummaged through her things for her wallet. "Hinata - keep your eyes on, as much as you can."

"H-hai."

Naruto bounced down the stairs, Temari and Hinata following at a more sedate pace, and burst out into the town. Midmorning. The streets already bustled with people, shoppers and storekeepers and travellers with their wagons full of supplies. Naruto turned left, towards the noodle shop whose basement Neji and Sasuke were hiding in.

"Hey!" Temari called, and when he turned, jerked her head in the opposite direction. "Wrong way."

Naruto made a face. "That one isn't as good," he complained, but darted off in that direction anyways.

Temari tightened her grip on Hinata's hand. "And don't go too far!"

Hinata's fingers loosened and tightened again, and when Temari glanced over, her lips were trembling. Temari gave a firm squeeze. "Hey, it's okay. We'll be fine," she told the other girl.

"H-hai," Hinata whispered, and followed when she moved to join the crowd.

Temari thought the udon-ramen-soba stand near the town center was pretty decent, but Naruto adamantly insisted that the texture of the ramen was not chewy enough, and the soup was just a little too salty. He'd still take second-rate ramen over any other food, however, and Temari liked some of the side dishes they offered…

Distracted, she reacted to Hinata's sudden gasp far too late. She whirled, but an unfamiliar hand landed on her shoulder and yanked . She stumbled, and then she was in an alley. Cardboard and food scraps littered the ground, and the air stank of rotting meat and refuse.

She shoved Hinata behind her with one arm and drew a kunai with her other hand, eyes darting back and forth. A second later, Naruto was also deposited bodily into the alley with an indignant yell, and she checked herself before hurled the kunai at his head. "Naruto, get back," she snarled, as a figure loomed from the opposite side.

At first glance, he looked entirely unthreatening. He was not particularly tall nor his shoulders especially broad. His face was youthful and still a little round, and his cloak draped on him like it was a little too big. He held no weapons. But when she looked closer, she could see the way he stood with a shinobi's stillness, the calm calculation in his eyes. He'd snatched them off the streets with ease, and she had no doubt he could kill each of them easily if he wished.

"Naruto-kun, Hinata-kun," he greeted with a slight nod. "And...kunoichi-san." He inclined his head at Temari gravely. "I have no plans to hurt you."

Temari's lip curled as she tensed even further. "Yeah?"

"It seems rather unsafe for you to be this far in Iwa," he continued placidly. "Where is your sensei?"

Temari narrowed her eyes and didn't respond.

A pause. "Hm. I see." He blinked once, deliberately. "I assume the youngest is with her too?"

"We're not telling you anything!" Naruto burst out, sidling up next to Temari to block Hinata from view. "You'll never find out where Sasuke is!"

Temari gritted her teeth and resisted the urge to stomp on Naruto's foot. "Shut up," she hissed harshly.

"I already know where my wayward little brother is," Itachi said dismissively, unmoved by their glares. "What you need is to find somewhere secure. If I found you here, others will be able to as well."

"I don't trust you!" retorted Naruto shrilly, and for once Temari was glad he'd spoken first.

Itachi tipped his head. "That's wise, I suppose. However, you are not safe here. I have not concealed my presence here, and if Konoha doesn't come looking, Iwa will."

Temari narrowed her eyes. "What do you want with us?" she spat. "Why does it matter to you?"

"Sasuke is my little brother," Itachi answered after a pause. "And I do not wish to see any of you fall into Konoha's hands."

"Nee-chan," Naruto whispered - far too loud to actually hide anything he said. "Is he telling the truth?"

Temari summarily ignored him. "How do we know you're not with Konoha?" she demanded. "You haven't even slashed out your hitai-ate."

"My allegiance is pledged to the Hokage, and to Konoha and her citizens," he replied immediately, "but not to the pretender who holds power now."

Temari studied his face carefully. She believed him. She let her stance relax, but kept herself between the nuke-nin and the two younger children - though if he wanted any of them dead, she knew he could kill them before she'd even blinked.

Even so, she flinched back a little, kunai coming up defensively, when he advanced towards them unhurriedly. "Come, we will need to collect Sasuke and the young Hyuuga guardian. All of you need to be moved, protected, and - " he glanced back at them, mouth twisting unhappily, "- trained." He moved past them on silent feet, back towards the entrance of the alley.

"A-ano," Hinata whispered at her back. Temari could feel her trembling. "A-are we g-going w-with him?" she stuttered.

Temari set her shoulders. "Yes," she said firmly, reaching back to twine her hand with the younger girl's. "Come on, Naruto." And she strode purposefully after Itachi. At a safe distance, of course.

True to his word, Itachi did already know where Sasuke was. He wended unerringly through the crowds to the ramen shop - Naruto's favorite - and stopped outside the door leading to the basement. Temari gritted her teeth. At her side, Hinata looked apprehensive, and Naruto a combination of belligerent and defensive.

"Perhaps you would like to go first," Itachi said, turning to face her. "I realize this is an unusual situation and likely to alarm your friends."

"Yeah, sure," said Temari, and herded Naruto and Hinata ahead of her.

The door banged shut behind them, leaving them in the dim basement. Boxes and battered bar stools were stacked to the ceiling, illuminated by a single flickering light bulb swaying overhead. At the far end of the room, near the stair leading up into the storefront, Sasuke and Neji were poised like birds before flight.

"What's going on?" Sasuke demanded, the quaver in his voice belying his uncertainty.

"Why did you lead him here?" Neji sneered, and Temari could feel his glare even through the bandages. "Are you that incompetent that you'd give up our location if he just asks ?"

"He already knew you were here!" Temari snapped. "You were supposed to. Stay. Hidden!" She was being unfair, she knew, but the adrenaline of the morning was still rushing through her veins, winding her up until she was taut and strained.

She could see Neji winding up to spit back a retort, so she forestalled it with her sharpest glare. "Sasuke," she continued relentlessly. "He says he's with the rebels. Do you believe that?"

"Yes," Sasuke answered immediately, hands twisting in the hem of his shirt. "He always said he loved Konoha. It's more believable if he became a nuke-nin to keep fighting for Konoha instead of for money or something. He won't hurt us."

"Of course he won't hurt us," Neji muttered caustically. "Most of us are worth a small fortune on the black market."

"He said he'll train us!" Naruto interjected. "And we can't stay here, anyways. Cuz there's people chasing him too, and they'll find us when they're looking for him."

Neji cast an interrogative glance at Temari. She nodded. He scowled and looked away.

"We'll go with him," Temari said decisively. "But we'll leave the flowers."

"The flower - oh," said Naruto, realization coming half a beat late. His ability to grasp the subtle side of shinobi life was tenuous at best.

Reluctant nods from the other three younger children. Neji's jaw clenched before he gave a sharp nod as well.

Temari turned to lead the way back out of the basement, and before he followed, Neji gave the front stairs one last look.

Itachi was waiting where they'd left him, standing military-straight in the shadows cast by the roof and morning sun. He started towards them as they emerged one by one, and his eyes went straight to Sasuke. "Otouto," he greeted warmly, and Temari saw his eyes soften. "I'm glad you are safe."

Sasuke's eyes darted to the side before meeting his, but he smiled. "Hi, aniki."

Itachi reached out a hand, and Neji stiffened, but the older Uchiha merely ruffled Sasuke's hair affectionately, before turning towards the street. Sasuke, who'd ducked away a little at the touch, looked conflicted between relieved and disappointed. "Come," said Itachi. "We have been out in the open too long; we will need to regroup before my team arrives."

"Team?" Temari demanded sharply, hand tightening reflexively on Hinata's. The younger girl let out a muffled squeak of protest, and she loosened her grip under Neji's (presumed) glare.

Itachi paused, blinking owlishly. "Yes. Team. I work closely with others who share my views of Konoha." Temari exchanged glances with Neji. "In any case, I cannot effectively protect all of you by myself."

"We've been doing just fine," Temari muttered.

The nukenin gave her an unexpectedly grave look. "You have done admirably. But you should not have had to."

Thrown, Temari faltered as Itachi turned back to the street. She recovered, sending a narrowed-eye glare at his back. He was three years older than she was, what right did he have to patronize her?

With a quick glance to make sure the others were following - they were, though with varying degrees of reluctance - Temari tugged Hinata towards the storefront.

"- thank you, Urushi," Itachi was saying as Temari rounded the corner to find him talking to...a wolf. Or maybe a dog. It panted up at him agreeably, then swung its head around to eye the children with an uncannily intelligent stare.

A quiet intake of breath - Temari glanced over her shoulder. Naruto had stopped, staring at the dog with a faintly bemused expression. Before she could ask what was wrong, and before she could tell him not to pet strange dogs (honestly, everyone knew that!) he tilted his head thoughtfully and walked up to peer at it more closely. "Hi," he said. The dog poked its nose in his face, and Naruto giggled a little, hands coming up automatically to push it away.

"This is Urushi," Itachi introduced. "He has agreed to help me keep watch."

Temari eyed the dog dubiously. It was a ninken - it must be - so was it Itachi's? Could it speak?

"In the meantime," he continued, pulling Temari out of her thoughts, "perhaps you would like to return to the hostel to collect your things…?" he paused. "I don't believe I caught your name?"

"It's Rikku," Temari said shortly before one of the others could answer for her. Naruto, absorbed in petting the dog, barely heard - which was good, because the others were all good enough liars not to give her away. "Naruto, come on."

She distangled her hand gently from Hinata's, placing it gently on Neji's shoulder, and dragged Naruto with her back across the street to the hostel. The others didn't follow, but Urushi-the-dog padded at their heels, tongue lolling agreeably.

"Hi, Baa-chan!" Temari called in as she and Naruto entered. The dog didn't follow them in, instead sprawling in front and to the side of the door.

"Oh, hello, dear," the baa-chan beamed, snaggletoothed, appearing in the kitchen doorway. "What are you up to? Where's that sister of yours?"

"Ah, our cousin came to get us!" Temari lied, smiling widely. "He's keeping her company for a bit while we grab our stuff."

"Leaving so soon?" She held up a wizened hand. "Wait right there! I'll pack you some food for the trip."

"Baa-chan, you don't need to," Temari protested halfheartedly.

When at last she and Naruto straggled out the door of the hostel, back to the ramen stand, a disgruntled Sasuke was scowling, holding hands with both Hyuuga. Neji was glowering ferociously, clearly displeased with his participation in the human chain, and Hinata just looked uncomfortable. Itachi stood back a pace, his face serene, holding a large bag of ramen takeout in each hand. Temari fought the sudden urge to laugh at the sight.

Itachi's motel was neither shabby nor opulent; it reminded her of the shinobi himself - efficient and straightforward. A murmured conversation with the desk clerk got them a large room with a low couch and two beds.

Once in the room, Neji dropped Sasuke's hand as if it burned him and pulled the bandages around his eyes down to hang loosely around his neck. Temari scowled at him, but he shrugged. "He knows who we are already, Rikku ," he said pointedly.

They both turned to look at the nuke-nin, who for all appearances was ignoring them as he sat cross-legged on the floor, setting out the ramen.

Naruto, lured in like a cat by the smell, crept up to sit across from him, and Sasuke settled somewhat apprehensively at his elbow. Hinata hadn't moved from the door, though she'd closed it behind her, and she was fidgeting with the bandages she'd unravelled.

"Come eat, Hinata-sama," Neji said imperiously, moving to sit more or less as far from Itachi as he possibly could while still being a part of the little circle. Hinata's lips whitened, but she moved almost automatically to his side.

It was quite possibly the most uncomfortable meal she'd experienced, and that was including 'family' meals back in Suna.

Neji almost pointedly activated his Byakugan to examine the ramen, and took a few bites of Hinata's before he would allow her to eat it.

Sasuke, seemingly alternating between jittery and silently imploring Itachi to notice him, picked at his food with little enthusiasm. Naruto, on the other hand, dug in with his usual appalling lack of manners.

Temari liked to think she was above all that. She ate at a reasonable pace - without slurping or checking for poison (really, if he wanted to he could have done it long ago) - and kept her movements controlled and deliberate.

"So, Rikku-san," Itachi said after a moment. He'd eaten more than Sasuke, but not as much as Naruto. "Did your sensei mention where she might be going?"

Temari felt herself stiffen. Beside her, Neji's chopsticks paused on their way to his takeout container.

"Ah. Never mind," Itachi amended. "I am not using you for information. We will find a way to contact her soon enough."

Temari's eyes met with Neji's.

Itachi sighed and put down his chopsticks. "My team wanted to request her assistance in our efforts, but she had gone to ground soon after the Sandaime's assassination, and we could not find her. I mean her no harm. Truly."

An awkward pause.

"So, uh," Naruto broke the silence, fidgeting with his chopsticks now that his own ramen was gone. "Sasuke said you were Anbu?"

"I was," Itachi allowed. "I was promoted to captain a year before the coup."

Temari's eyes widened despite herself, and Naruto blurted, "What? Weren't you like, ten?"

Sasuke's arm twitched like he wanted to slap the blond, but didn't want to act out in front of his brother.

"Thirteen," corrected Itachi. "I was recruited when I was eleven, soon after my promotion to chuunin."

"Wow, that is so cool! You must be, like, super strong!" Naruto enthused, and this time Sasuke did punch him in the arm.

"Keep it down, idiot, you'll get us all killed," he hissed, mirroring Hinata's reflexive glance at the window.

Temari mechanically forced herself to take another bite of her ramen and wondered if she'd been too reckless.

The evening was uneasy, with Temari and Hinata sharing one bed and Sasuke, Naruto, and Neji crammed on the other. Silently, she glanced over at Neji and raised both eyebrows; he gave a tiny nod in response. They would take turns with the watch that night. If Itachi was aware of it, he made no comment.

It was Temari who was awake in the early hours of the morning when it happened. Itachi, who had been awake and crosslegged on the couch for a little over an hour staring absently out the window, stiffened and rose in one smooth movement. He hadn't been expressive before, but the hint of warmth he'd begun to display earlier when they'd been awake wiped off his face abruptly, leaving behind a smooth mask. Alarmed, Temari tensed, watching through slitted eyes as he strode to the door. Her arm shot out across the gap between beds, shaking Neji gently. He came awake instantly, narrowed eyes focused immediately first on her face, then at the door Itachi opened.

She heard almost inaudible scuff as Itachi stood back to let someone in, and she itched to turn to see who it was. Neji's eyes widened slightly before closing. Temari quickly closed hers as well.

The door clicked shut.

"Taichou," Itachi greeted softly, stiff and formal.

A long silence yawned. "It's them. You really found the Lost Four." The new voice is deep, contemplative.

"Three of them," said Itachi. "I believe Neko still has the youngest."

The other man hummed in acknowledgement. "Any injuries?"

"They are all almost certainly undernourished," Itachi said. "But they have no physical injuries that I could tell."

"That's easily fixed." Another pause. "And the...others?"

"Perhaps we could ask them," Itachi said pointedly, and Temari felt a thrill of fear down her spine despite herself. In front of her, Neji's breath continued, deep and slow.

"Neji-san, Rikku-san. Otouto," Itachi prompted mildly.

Temari opened her eyes, face darkening in a scowl mirrored on Neji's face as they both sat up. On Neji's other side, Sasuke glowered as he scooted back to the headboard.

The newcomer was at least ten centimeters taller than Itachi, and he too stood military-straight in an incongruous cloak thrown over battered Konoha gear. From first glance, even with his chakra signature muted, Temari knew he was dangerous - the stillness he carried himself with, the way Itachi deferred to him, the assessing stare.

He wore a bandana over his hair and his hitai-ate crooked over one eye, and Temari's breath stuttered as recognition hit.

Sharingan no Kakashi, the Copy-Nin. He'd been in Suna's bingo book since his promotion to jounin at the age of 11.

She stared back defiantly as he turned his visible eye on her. "What is the Sandaime Kazekage's heir doing in Iwa with the missing heirs of Konoha's biggest clans?"

Temari froze under the weight of his unrelenting stare, heart pounding. By herself, she knew she was unremarkable, unrecognizable, especially as she looked now. Nobody outside Kaze no Kuni should recognize her without seeing her with the more distinctive Gaara. And with the implications of who she was and who the others were...

"Temari is important for our survival," Neji jumped to her defense unexpectedly, interrupting her racing thoughts. "She has done nothing but protect the children."

"She takes care of us," Sasuke chimed in, miraculously resisting the urge to yell at Neji for calling him a child when he himself was only a year older.

A pregnant pause. Hatake blinked then, the implicit threat vanishing. "Hm. I'll have to hear this story later," he said, heavy with promise.

"Do you prefer we continue to refer to you as Rikku-san?" Itachi inquired.

Temari scowled again. "Temari's fine," she grumbled.

"Wake those two and pack your things," Hatake said abruptly. "We need to collect the others and go."

"The others?" Neji asked, almost too calmly.

"It would be unstrategic to leave three children, particularly a jinchuuriki, in enemy territory," he responded offhandedly, and Temari grimaced. "If you would come with me, Temari-san, we'll rendezvous outside the village."

Neji gave her an inquisitive stare, and she gave a tiny nod, resigned.

"Be careful," he said, as she leaned out of bed and slipped into her sandals.

"Take care of them," she returned, grabbing her untouched pack from the floor, and followed Kakashi to the door.

"I'll come with you!" Sasuke interjected suddenly, and everybody swung around in surprise. Temari's mouth quirked in an involuntary grin when he glared suspiciously at Hatake.

"Sasuke - " Itachi began, but the younger Uchiha had already grabbed his pack.

"I'll - I'll see you later, aniki," he said stubbornly, tilting his chin up to better stare down Hatake.

"Come quietly," was all Hatake said, before nodding at Itachi and sweeping out the door.

The ninken from before was waiting outside in the dim glow of the pre-dawn. His tail thumped welcomingly against the ground.

"The other children, Urushi," Hatake said, and the wolfish hound was up and trotting down the street.

Temari scowled at the dog's retreating back, a little betrayed. She and Sasuke had to jog to keep up with Hatake's long strides, and the shinobi showed no signs of slowing down to accommodate them. He seemed assured that they would follow him, and that rankled a little.

Itachi had seemed genuine, though, and as intimidating as he was, Hatake appeared to be an ally as well. Between her, Gaara, Sasuke, Hinata, and Naruto, she knew they were valuable, and even if Itachi and Hatake did see them just as chess pieces, they would at least protect them from the Konoha and Suna shinobi hunting them. With the combined strength of two shinobi who had been in the ranks of Konoha's elite since they were younger than she was now, Temari believed they could keep all of who she had begun to consider 'her' kids safe.

It would be nice, she thought wistfully, to be able to live without constant fear of discovery, always on the run until they became strong enough to defend themselves.

She glanced to the side where Sasuke trotted, pack bouncing on his back. He met her eyes with a determined set to his eyes, and her mouth quirked in a lopsided smile as she felt a sudden rush of affection.

Sasuke had his brother back. They could get Itachi and Hatake to train them to get stronger, faster. They would finally be able to fight back instead of running and hiding.

It wouldn't be just Temari, trying to keep the kids warm and fed and safe.

She sighed wryly. The downside of more people - Gaara would not be happy with this.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Shisui Says "Shit" More In This Chapter Than I've Said In My Entire Life

Shisui has maybe been through a little trauma but he's still trying so I'm proud of him.

* * *

MISSION REPORT: D-5

0500 HOURS All-clear not received.

Initiated Phase 3 of Protocol 73-I.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15 

* * *

High in the boughs of a tree that towered over its neighbors, and with the pointed muzzle of a hound resting on his thigh, Shisui watched the sun set in a blaze of golden hues. He rubbed his thumb over Guruko's forehead absently in the ninken's rare moment of stillness as the wind ruffled the dark tangles of curls flopping over Shisui's hitai-ate.

Shisui sank into the calm. Here, above the ground, above the endless futile struggles, he could let himself believe nothing else mattered. He could be content with a fleeting moment of peace hundreds of miles from home, watching the sunset.

Guruko finally shifted, leaning over to shove a damp, cold nose into Shisui's hand. Shisui flinched away, and realized the dying rays of the sun had long since vanished behind the horizon. The only light now was from the distant pinpricks of stars, and the smoldering remains of the fire below him. He scruffed a hand over Guruko's ears apologetically. "Sorry, sorry," he said wryly. "You hungry?"

The hound yipped and bounded up in a flash, darting back and forth with little pounces and a madly wagging tail that drew a smile to Shisui's face. "Lead the way," said Shisui, and the ninken vanished down the tree in a flurry of rustling foliage.

Shisui dropped out of the tree lightly, landing in an easy crouch. At the mouth of the cave, Guruko was enthusiastically washing Haku's face - the younger shinobi's eyes were closed as he bemusedly and patiently tolerated the ninken's greeting.

"Hey, Haku," said Shisui, amused. "Got anything for Guruko, here? Says he's hungry. Give him some room, Guruko."

"I don't believe we have leftovers from dinner, Shisui-san," Haku managed, as Guruko reluctantly backed up a couple steps. "But perhaps I could find some dried meat?"

Guruko's tail thumped the ground eagerly.

"This is why taichou thinks you're spoiled," Shisui scolded halfheartedly, even as Haku dug through their travel packs. "We keep feeding you and you'll get fat. You'll have to roll after your prey."

Guruko panted up at them shamelessly, making little leaps across the width of the cave. Shisui crossed his arms even as he watched the ninken fondly. As the youngest of Hatake's hounds, Guruko was much more likely to indulge in puppylike displays of exuberance. Further in the shadows of the cave, Urushi stared at the other ninken longsufferingly.

"Looking forward to Kusa?" Shisui asked Haku as the younger tossed a piece of jerky to the ninken.

"It will be nice to leave camp for a little," Haku admitted, sinking down gracefully next to Guruko. "Zabuza-san mentioned that a new oden stand opened in Kasai, the border town, and I'd love to try it."

"Oof, oden," Shisui said wistfully. "You better bring some back for me."

Haku wrinkled his nose delicately. "I'm not sure you'll want two-day-old oden, Shisui-san."

Shisui made a face. "You're right," he agreed reluctantly. "Better not risk that. How about a pet? If you get me a bird, I bet I could train it to screech every time Zabuza curses."

The corner of Haku's mouth twitched in a stifled smile.

"Konoha!"

Shisui turned to see the hulking Swordsman stalk out of the trees, rivulets of water trailing along the raised Y-incision scar on the man's bare torso and dripping onto his rapidly dampening pants.

Shisui raised an eyebrow. "Wow, Z, you ever heard of a towel?"

"Stop corrupting my apprentice," Zabuza growled, jabbing a finger at Shisui. "And you - don't even _think_ about it."

"I'm not sure what you're referring to, Zabuza-san," said Haku, completely straight-faced.

"I mean it, kid," Zabuza warned as he clumped past. "Any bird you bring back will be roasted. And eaten."

Haku frowned regretfully.

"Well, maybe a rabbit," Shisui suggested cheerfully.

" _No_ ," said Zabuza from the back of the cave, voice muffled as he shrugged into one of his black sleeveless shirts.

"A cat," said Shisui. "You better be okay with cats, Z, you don't have a problem with any of the hounds."

The Swordsman glanced askance at the two ninken very carefully not paying attention to their conversation. "That's different," he muttered. "They're not _food_."

Guruko's tail thumped encouragingly. Low bar, but hey, this was Zabuza. Practically a declaration of love.

"Did you put warding seals up?" Zabuza asked, nodding his head vaguely in the direction of the forest as he wandered back towards Shisui and Haku. "Didn't see any just now."

Shisui grimaced. "No, we're running low. I figured I should keep the ones we still have for when I'm the only one here."

"Aw, afraid of being all by yourself in the scary forest?" Zabuza mocked lightly. "Aren't you supposed to be a big, strong shinobi, Konoha?"

Shisui snorted. "I'm not the one bringing a ten-year-old to watch his back, asshole."

"Nearly eleven," Haku interjected helpfully.

"I'm training him," Zabuza grumbled, ignoring his apprentice. "It's an investment."

"Whatever lets you sleep at night, Z," said Shisui, trading an amused glance with Haku.

Zabuza sniffed. "Give us a light, Konoha," he said, in a valiant and rare attempt to be the adult in the conversation. "May as well make us a target."

Shisui spat a tongue of flame at the pile of charred wood obligingly. "On your head, if the combined forces of Konoha and Iwa descend on us here," he warned. "I'm not going to be the one who tells Hatake-taichou who got his nice new base wrecked."

"At least we'll get some action." Zabuza flicked a stick onto the burgeoning fire.

Shisui eyed him sympathetically. "You know, you could just ask Taichou for another kind of mission."

Zabuza snorted. "Is that what you do?"

Shisui hesitated. "No," he admitted ruefully. "I take what's given to me and am grateful for it. But that's different," he reproached.

Zabuza shrugged one shoulder dismissively. "Pretty sure you're ready for the field, Konoha."

"Hmm," said Shisui noncommittally. He stared pensively at the flame dancing merrily between them, and his hands twitched as he forced them to stay unclenched.

"I'd be fine with you watching my back, I guess," Zabuza offered gruffly, glaring at the fire as well to avoid making eye contact.

"I as well, Shisui-san," Haku chimed in much more warmly.

"Aw," said Shisui, torn between feeling touched and mercilessly mocking the Mist-nin because _feelings_.

Zabuza rolled his eyes. "Don't make it weird, Konoha."

Shisui gave in to the overwhelming temptation. "Come on, Z, I thought we had a connection," he wheedled, widening his eye innocently. "I know you care. You _love_ me."

Okay, Shisui reflected, as he ducked the pair of shuriken that whistled over his head, maybe he had a habit of pushing the man's self-restraint. And maybe it wasn't the healthiest hobby.

"Perhaps you should avoid damaging the base, Zabuza-san," suggested Haku serenely as Shisui flickered out of the way of a second volley.

"Oi," protested Shisui indignantly.

"And Shisui-san," Haku added dutifully.

Zabuza reluctantly replaced a handful of shuriken in his holster. "Keep your sentimental Leaf bullshit out of this," he growled.

"I can't help it, it's in my nature," Shisui insisted with a straight face. "The urge to emote, it's just so strong."

"Shut up," Zabuza snarled, hand twitching towards Kubikiribocho.

Behind him, Haku raised his eyebrows subtly.

Shisui manfully shoved down the urge to needle the Swordsman further. See, Haku? He did too have a survival instinct. He paused.

"I just _feel_ \- " And he fled into the forest outside as Zabuza charged after him, blade held aloft.

Okay, so maybe he didn't.

Sometimes, Shisui wondered when he would stop running. In battle, from his battles, from every shitty thing that ever happened to him. After Konoha was theirs again, he'd told himself. Until he was home.

But he already knew that was a lie. Shisui would run until the day he died.

"Go back to sleep, Haku," Shisui said without turning around.

The younger shinobi ignored him, scooping Guruko's head into his lab as he settled beside Shisui against the wall of the cave. The forest outside was pitch black; the only light was the still-smoldering fire Shisui had allowed to dwindle.

"It is unfair that you should watch the entire night through when there are three of us," Haku murmured, running light fingers over the sleeping ninken's ears.

Shisui shrugged. "I'm going to be up anyways. Makes no sense that more than one of us needs to be awake." He glanced at the younger shinobi and reached over to rub at the furrow that appeared between Haku's brows. "Hey, cut that out. It's fine."

"You need your rest as well," Haku insisted, by far too polite to slap Shisui's hand away.

"You need it more," Shisui retorted, taking his hand back anyways. "You're the one going to Kusa. You won't have an extra man in the watch rotation after travelling the whole day with just the two of you, may as well take advantage of it while you can."

Haku was a good shinobi kid. Shisui eyed him, amused, as the boy's eyes hooded involuntarily. "You can keep me company as long as you sleep," he offered magnanimously.

"That does not sound fair," said Haku reproachfully, the frown reappearing.

"I'll tell Zabuza you stayed up training and wore yourself out," threatened Shisui, "even though he told you to sleep."

Haku's eyes narrowed. "You wouldn't. That's a _lie_."

"Sleep, kid," said Shisui smugly. "I'm a shinobi. Shinobi lie."

Haku accepted his defeat in silence with far more grace than either Shisui or Zabuza would have, leaning back against the rock. The hound in his lap shifted, reaching both front legs up to cover more of Haku. A drowsy Uhei dragged himself over as well, folding in long limbs to curl up with his back against the youngest shinobi.

By the time Zabuza clumped out, the sky was just a few shades lighter than pitch black, and Haku had slid down until his head was pillowed on Uhei's side. The Swordsman stopped and stared at his apprentice, something nearing a grudging affection and disapproval warring on his face to produce a strange half-grimace like he'd bitten into a lemon only to find it sickly sweet instead of sour.

Shisui watched with some amusement out of the corner of his eye until Haku stirred and Zabuza promptly wiped the expression off his face.

"Get up," he growled, prodding at his apprentice with a sandal.

Uhei opened one eye balefully but didn't otherwise move. Haku, on the other hand, shot bolt upright, jostling Guruko, who yelped his disapproval before scuttling over to Shisui instead. Haku blinked rapidly. "I'm ready," he said, staggering to his feet.

"Good morning," Shisui said cheerfully, unfazed by the long night. He stretched his legs out and felt the joints pop satisfyingly. "Sleep well?"

Zabuza glared at him, eyes just on the side of bleary. Zabuza was very much not a morning person.

"Yes, thank you, Shisui-san," said Haku, because someone had learned their manners as a kid. As a younger kid, still being a kid.

"Don't die while we're gone," Zabuza ordered Shisui, as Haku slung a pack over his shoulder. "I don't want to clean up that fucking mess."

Shisui watched the urge to make a quip about the Swordsman _caring_ sail past just a little regretfully. That could only end bloody. "Yeah, same to you," he said instead. "I'd hate to have to make Haku drag your corpse across half the country."

Zabuza grunted. Haku waved, and they were gone, leaving Shisui alone.

Well, Shisui regarded the slumbering bodies around him wryly, alone except for the captain's ninken. He hauled himself up and blinked the dryness out of his eye. May as well put the seals up and take a nap until the sun actually rose.

Shisui awoke, blinking blindly in the darkness, shivering uncontrollably as his muscles remembered the burn of the drugs. He sat up, prying off the fingers clutching his tanto's hilt in a dead man's grip. Numbly, he shifted backwards until his back hit the wall.

"Taki no Kuni," he muttered, deliberately spacing his breaths. "Late autumn. It rained yesterday." Inhale, exhale. "I saw Itachi. Taki no Kuni." He half-grinned, half-grimaced bitterly, staring at his trembling hands and willing them to stop shaking. "Late autumn. It rained yesterday." Sixteen months later, and the Sannin still had a hold on him.

He strapped on his kunai holster and slid his tanto into its harness, hauling himself upright. He didn't know if training was a healthy coping mechanism, but hey, it worked, kind of, so it was good enough for him.

Shisui rounded the corner to the mouth of the cave, sidestepping puddles and sprawled-out ninken. Only Akino, Urushi, and Guruko were here now - it wasn't unusual for Hatake's ninken to take off into the surrounding forest by themselves overnight or even wander off in the middle of the day, but they didn't tend to go far. Guruko whuffed a greeting, craning his neck up to snuffle at his hand and though Akino merely stared regally, Urushi's tail thumped against the ground in welcome.

"Good morning," said Shisui, summoning up his usual cheer as he scratched Guruko's ears. "I'm just going to go train for a bit, no need to follow me." Urushi's tail stilled. Oh, gods. Hatake's ninken could be oddly clingy, and Shisui did not want to get glared at for making his hounds sulk. "Maybe we can go for a hunt when I get back?" he tried, and Urushi gave him a wolfish grin as his tail resumed its rhythmic beat.

Crisis averted. He gave Guruko one last pat when the hound shoved his cold nose into his hand and strode out through the brush. The rain had passed, but the sky was still blanketed in clouds and moisture hung in the air. Murky puddles were scattered on the ground, and where there wasn't standing water, there was mud.

Shisui walked lightly atop both, then picked up his pace to a brisk run, then a headlong sprint before he was hurtling between trees, wind whipping through his unruly hair.

He had been on the battlefield since he was seven, seen bloodshed and spilled blood for the first time in the same year. He had never physically been the strongest on the battlefield - even as a child, he'd only had his speed to keep him alive, to excel.

Reluctantly, he slowed as he reached his destination. This copse was no different than the surrounding trees, but had been his preferred training location since they'd established their base camp in Taki no Kuni. He'd carved tiny marks into the bark, when he first came, but he'd trained here so many times the numbers were all but obliterated by deep scores from his blades. It was fine. He'd long since memorized the order.

Today was a backwards by threes day, Shisui decided, hopping up onto the trunk of number 50 and casting a considering eye at 47. He gathered his chakra, coiled in him like a snake. He drew a kunai, spinning it absently, slashed the bark in one quick strike and _moved_.

A thrill of exhilaration shot through him. This was speed. This was _living_.

He landed, already pivoted to rebound, and pounced for the next mark. His focus narrowed to his body, his target, his breath rasping harshly in his chest. The trees whipped past in blurs as he pushed himself harder, faster twisting his body to avoid the reaching branches.

Land, slash, turn. Shisui felt his chakra crackle as he threw himself into one shunshin, then the next, and the next. All around him, leaves and tiny twigs rained down from the force of the winds blown by his passing.

Mid-shunshin, his focus wavered when he suddenly realized he'd misjudged the distance to the next target. He twisted desperately and only just managed to clip the side of the trunk with side of his chest, knocking the breath out of him and sending into an uncontrolled tumble instead of a head-on collision with the tree. He threw himself to the right to avoid a bush and skidded to a stop on his side. He rolled onto his back.

For a moment, he lay panting, a sudden frustrated rage bubbling up in his chest. _That wouldn't have happened if he still had both eyes_. But as soon as it came, it vanished, leaving him hollow and indifferent in the mud. He dragged a grimy hand down his face. "Damn," he muttered aloud, without feeling.

He picked himself up, brushing off the thickest of the dirt caked on his clothes, then turned to face the trees again. He sank into a crouch, raising his kunai back into a ready position.

Deep breath in, out. He sprang.

The first sign something was up was the ninken. From his upside-down position, balancing on one hand, he saw all three dogs' heads go up, ears pricked. Akino rolled to his feet without even shaking out his fur, Guruko and wolfish Urushi arrayed behind him. Shisui came down from his handstand, moving against the cave wall and dropping a hand towards his kunai holster.

"Is it an enemy?" he asked in an undertone.

Guruko swung his head around and blinked deliberately before turning back around, head tilted towards the entrance. Reassured but still cautious, Shisui leaned against the wall, watching the ninken watch the forest.

Eventually he heard what they could - running pawsteps, feather-light - and then the smallish shepherd mix that had left with Itachi some two days ago leapt into the cave. "Shiba," Shisui said in surprise.

The ninken had clearly been running hard for a long time. His tongue lolled out of his mouth, and even as he stood at a halt, his legs trembled. Guruko and Urushi surged around Akino to nose at the new arrival, whuffing concernedly at his sides. Akino growled something, clearly interrogative, and Shiba responded.

Shisui sighed through his nose and went to grab some water and meat from the deer he'd taken down the day before for Shiba from the back. Kakashi's hounds only talked - human speech - to Kakashi, or when they thought nobody would overhear, and he doubted that would change now.

There was a high pitched yelp, sounds of a scuffle, and Shisui turned in time to see Akino snap his jaws at Guruko, who reared back before grumbling a growl and sprinting from the cave in a whirl of long limbs. "Hey!" Shisui called after him. The three remaining hounds swung around to look at him. "Where's he going?" The ninken exchanged glances, and Akino rumbled a little and bumped his muzzle into Urushi's shoulder. Urushi gave Shisui a kind of apologetic, toothy grin and loped out of the cave as well.

'They're ninken,' Shisui thought, 'they can make their own decisions.' And then, 'Kakashi-sempai probably gave them orders too. He never said they have to stay in the cave.' And he hoped it was true, because he really, really didn't want the captain holding him responsible for his hounds running off to who knows where.

"I hope you know what you're doing," he told Akino, ambling over to sink down next to the two ninken. Akino shot him the frostiest, most offended blue-eyed glare he'd ever seen from a dog. Unbelievable. "...just kidding." Shisui faked a smile, to which the ninken sniffed and turned away, and set down the food and water for Shiba.

Shisui liked Shiba better. Shiba was friendly.

Shiba sprawled with his back against Shisui's lap as his legs folded involuntarily, paying no attention to the food or water as he let his head thump to the floor.

"Hey, no," Shisui admonished, and reached out to grab the dog's forelegs gently, slowly extending and folding them in turn. "You can't just lay down after running, you'll cramp up."

Shiba rolled his head around and gave him a happy grin, not even attempting to move since Shisui was doing all the stretching for him. At his side, Akino let out a disgusted huff.

"He's right, you're spoiled," he told Shiba, smoothing his fingers against the short fur on the ninken's legs. Akino twitched.

Shisui nudged the smaller ninken with his knee. "C'mon, Shiba, eat something," he prompted. "You must be hungry."

Shiba lolled his head dramatically in the direction of the bowl of meat, snapping his jaws pitifully.

Akino bared his teeth. Shisui rolled his eyes. "Stop being such a brat," he groused, but leaned over anyways to scoot the meat closer.

Hatake was right. His hounds were going soft, and it was probably because Shisui kept coddling them. He reached out to card a hand through Shiba's fur.

He stared out into the forest. There wasn't much to do at base camp besides train, make sure nobody found him, and keep supplies stocked. Being the invalid of the team sucked. "When will my husband return from war?" he singsonged sardonically. "Ouch!" He snatched his hand back from Shiba's warning nip and met the ninken's reproachful stare indignantly.

Shisui's mouth quirked in a lopsided grin. "Too depressing? Sorry." He ruffled the hound's ears. Shiba stared for another second and went back to eating.

At the edge of his vision, he saw Akino roll his eyes.

"Hey, I saw that," Shisui snapped half-heartedly, and was summarily ignored. He leaned back absently. "Hey, Akino?" The ninken's ears swivelled in his direction. "Where'd Uhei and Bull go? Are they, er - on a mission?" Akino swung his head around to rest on his paws and regarded him unwaveringly. "Okay. Are they still in Taki no Kuni?" Slowly, the hound blinked.

Shisui liked to think he and Akino had a special kind of connection. They even had a special code to communicate, where Shisui asked a polar question and Akino answered with a withering stare that meant 'yes' or an _are you dumb_ blink that meant 'no'.

"Is it a surveillance mission?" Stare. "Are they coming straight back here?" Stare. "In the next day?" Blink.

Communicating with Akino could be a little tiring.

"Okay, what happened with Itachi's mission?" Shiba's tail thumped a little at the mention of Itachi's name as he gnawed a meaty bone, the last remains of his meal, but otherwise ignored the exchange. "Is he coming back?" Akino blinked. Shisui hesitated. "...ever?" Akino gave him a particularly scathing look. "Dumb question," Shisui admitted.

He gave up. He suspected Akino liked being obstinate, and if it were really urgent, Itachi would have sent a written message.

He sighed. "I'm going to get some more firewood," he said, and carefully shifted Shiba so he could get up without disturbing the ninken too much. Unsurprisingly, Shiba grumbled anyways.

A couple hours later, over a dinner of venison, stewed for Shisui and extra bloody rare for the hounds, Shiba vanished mid-bite in a puff of smoke.

Shisui flinched hard enough to drop his bowl, but caught it before any of its contents spilled. Across the fire, Akino rose unhurriedly and bit his paw. The ninken's chakra surged, and Hatake appeared in a crouch amid the smoky residue of the summoning. With the warning, Shisui only twitched.

"Taichou," he greeted, as the older man rose. Shisui glanced at Akino, standing alert at Hatake's side, and Hatake's own intent expression. "What happened?" Whatever had happened on Itachi's mission must have been urgent after all, for Kakashi to cut his own trip short.

Hatake cast a cursory glance over the cave. Shisui hoped he wasn't looking for the other ninken.

"Itachi found the Lost Four in Oshina," Hatake said without preamble. "Pack everything up and clear the site."

Shisui blinked. _What?_ "Hai," he said faintly, on autopilot, glancing back towards the scattered equipment further in the caves.

When he turned back around, Hatake had summoned back Guruko, who lay panting in a tangle of limbs on the cave floor. Shisui turned a disapproving frown on Hatake, who looked at least a little apologetic.

"I'll be going straight to Oshino to help Itachi and move the Four out of Iwa," said Hatake, already facing out towards the visible sunset. "I sent Bisuke to recall Zabuza and Haku. As soon as they get back here, meet us on the way. Pursuit is probable; we will need backup."

"Where are we taking them?" Shisui asked, fumbling another trencher out of the bag for Hatake.

Hatake hesitated slightly. "Tetsu no Kuni," he admitted.

Shisui's eyes widened. "Iron? Isn't that kind of risky?"

"We have a deep cover operative there," said Hatake. "And it's more important that we get the Four somewhere safe, even if it means compromising our agent or risking violating Tetsu's neutrality." He caught the trencher Shisui tossed him and helped himself to the stew, though he remained standing and poised to retreat back out into the forest.

Shisui hesitated. "Is Sasuke…?"

Hatake cut his eye over to Shisui and nodded once. "He's there. He's fine." He tossed the empty trencher to Akino, who caught it with a snap of his jaws.

Shisui let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

"There are some unknowns there as well," the other man added vaguely. "The situation will become complicated quickly unless we move fast."

"I'll come with you. Zabuza and Haku can - "

"No," Hatake interrupted. Shisui snapped his mouth shut. "We'll be more conspicuous if we go together; by all accounts there's been too much activity in the village already. Wipe the area and meet us en route."

"Hai," Shisui acquiesced reluctantly.

Hatake looked up and met his eyes. "Don't take too long," he warned, and in a swirl of his cloak, leapt out into the forest.

The significance of the news didn't really register to Shisui until after Kakashi had left. The _Lost Four_. Two years after the Fall, and nobody had known where the heirs had gone, or who, if anyone, had them. And they'd been in Iwa. "Shit," he breathed, and half-laughed. Not kidnapped. Not dead. Not collared in Konoha as bargaining chips or brainwashed soldiers.

"The Four. That was a pretty big damn thing to leave out," he said to Akino pointedly.

The big dog's ears flicked back, lips peeling back from his teeth just a bit in a sneer. _You didn't ask_ , the ninken's stare retorted insolently.

Shisui rolled his eye so hard it hurt. "Unbelievable," he muttered, and went to get a bowl of water for Guruko.

Zabuza blew in with Haku and Bisuke at his heels the next day a few minutes after Shisui finished taking down the last of the secrecy seals around the perimeter of their camp.

"Hey, Konoha," the Swordsman greeted. Haku smiled weakly behind him, swaying a little on his feet. "What's this about?" He tossed a scroll at Shisui.

Shisui caught it, unfurling it with one hand and gesturing absently at the pot of stew with his other hand - the only sign of their camp remaining. "Urgent. Abort mission. New objective. Butterfly." It wasn't signed. Shisui rolled his eye. "If I'd known he was going to make me tell you what's going on I would have gotten him to give me a better explanation."

Zabuza raised an eyebrow, shoving a trencher of stew at Haku, who took it gratefully and slid down against the wall.

"Itachi found the Lost Four in Iwa. Village of Oshino," said Shisui.

Zabuza didn't blink, emptying the pot into another trencher. "The what?"

Shisui rolled the scroll shut, regarding him with an incredulous stare. "The Lost Four? The four kids that went missing from Konoha the night the Sandaime was assassinated?"

Zabuza shrugged. "Don't kids go missing all the time?"

"Well, yeah," Shisui admitted. "But these kids are the second son of the Uchiha Clan head, the first and second daughters of the Hyuga Clan head, and the Kyuubi jinchuuriki."

Both eyebrows went up. "Oh, shit," said Zabuza.

"Oh yeah, I probably wasn't supposed to tell you that last part," added Shisui belatedly. "Why don't you know about them? Apparently it was a big thing in the covert intelligence community. Everybody knew about them." _Despite all the cover-ups_ went unsaid.

Zabuza rolled his eyes. "I was busy trying to off the Mizukage. And then getting sliced and diced by that creepy snakefucker."

"Oh. Right." Real smooth, Shisui. Bring up everyone's unresolved trauma, why don't you. "For a while everyone though Kumo had them, since that sort of thing's right up their alley, and they are kind of at war with Konoha, but nobody could prove it one way or the other."

"So what're they doing in Iwa?"

Shisui hummed thoughtfully. "There was another theory. When I was in Anbu, there was a protocol in case the walls had been compromised, to get the underage members of the major clans' Main Branch families to safe points elsewhere in Hi no Kuni, in case the Head was killed. It's a relic from when the village was first founded; it'd never been used. But it was used that night, and at one of the safe points, the operative in charge of securing the Hyuuga girls left mission reports confirming their survival and that of Uchiha Sasuke. The last report suggested she would be taking them into deep cover, outside the country. Everyone thought it was planted, and Danzo really had them, but - " he shrugged. "Maybe not."

Zabaza frowned. "That's convenient. You're sure it's not a trap?"

"It could be," Shisui admitted. "But I don't think Itachi would fall for something like that. Even for his brother."

Zabuza's eyes widened. "Oh, shit. That's his _brother_. Damn."

"Yeah," agreed Shisui. "Cute kid. Or he was."

"So what's the plan?"

"I think the big one is 'get them out of Iwa.' We're supposed to meet up with them en route to Tetsu."

Zabuza squinted at him dubiously. "Lots of samurai in Tetsu."

Shisui shrugged. "Could be safer for a bunch of kids. Supposedly we have a deep cover plant there already."

"Hn." Zabuza was clearly unconvinced. "When do we leave?"

Shisui hesitated, glancing at Haku.

The younger boy was clearly exhausted, but struggled upright. "I'm ready," he insisted.

Zabuza scowled.

"Nah, not yet," Shisui dismissed. "Half an hour. I don't think Bisuke's ready to run again yet."

Zabuza eyed the little ninken in question, curled up next to the fire next to a half-chewed bone. "Take a break, Haku," he ordered. "You'll need your strength." Haku slumped back against the wall gratefully. "Anything else we need, Konoha?"

"Nah," said Shisui, sinking down so he could run a hand over Guruko's short fur. "Everything's packed. Unless you need to refill your water or anything."

"Mm." Zabuza swung the broadsword off his back, running a hand over the flat of the blade. He slit his finger on the edge distractedly, and when the blood welled up on his skin, smoothed it into the metal.

"Man," Shisui said. "That's still creepy."

"It's efficient," Zabuza corrected with a pointy-toothed grin. "It'll still be a perfectly good blade when that twig of yours has been sharpened into a needle."

Shisui scoffed, offended. "My tanto is fine, thanks very much. It just doesn't need to suck blood like a mosquito."

"Kurikiribouchou is a mosquito like an ocean is a puddle," Zabuza said loftily. "Whereas that pigsticker is a cup of water. A teacup. If I'm being generous."

"Oh my gods, I'm not doing this," Shisui groaned. "You're comparing our swords. With _poetry_. It's not even like the size matters, just the skill of the wielder."

"That's what the guy with the smaller sword always says," Zabuza said smugly, waggling his eyebrows at Shisui suggestively.

Shisui picked up the empty pot and threw it at Zabuza's head.

The clouds had finally broken up enough to reveal the moon by the time they were ready to leave base camp behind for the last time.

"Bisuke." Shisui poked the ninken, who ignored him. "Bisuke, get up." Still, the little dog didn't move. Shisui stared around helplessly.

Zabuza shrugged. Akino looked supremely unconcerned, while Guruko panted at him cheerfully from the edge of the cave.

"Nobody's going to _carry_ you, Bisuke," said Shisui, poking the dog again.

The top of Bisuke's head bumped against the underside of Shisui's chin with every stride he took. "Spoiled rotten, all of you," Shisui muttered at the ninken tucked down the front of his flak jacket. Bisuke, ostensibly still asleep, didn't even twitch.

"I'm sure he could have caught up in his own time, Shisui-san," Haku pointed out.

"He would have gotten _eaten_ ," Shisui defended, as if he wasn't aware what the ninken was capable of. "He's, like, one bite for an eagle or badger or something."

"Konoha," Zabuza said slowly, "badgers don't eat dogs."

"Yeah, but he's the size of a rabbit," argued Shisui. " _I'd_ eat him, if I were a badger." Bisuke made an offended grumbling noise. "Hush, unless you want to walk yourself," Shisui scolded.

The run north was relatively uneventful. Shisui was just glad to be moving again. Staying in the same place, anchored in a relatively unsecure area, had made him restless. His convalescence after his time with Orochimaru had been _terrible_.

Following Akino's lead, Shisui dropped out of the branches down next to Zabuza, and within minutes, caught sight of Hatake. They were just a couple kilometers inside the border. The sun had just fully breached the horizon, giving enough light for a pretty good first sight of the group.

Zabuza and Shisui exchanged looks.

"I thought you said four," said Zabuza finally.

"That's what I thought?" Shisui responded uncertainly, surveilling the kid on Hatake's back, the two girls riding Bull, a boy that had to be Sasuke on Itachi's back, and the four other kids arrayed between them. Each of the children regarded the newcomers with deep suspicion.

"Shisui, Haku, take point. Momoichi, rearguard and decoys. We need to get into Tetsu by nightfall," Hatake ordered without preamble. "Explanations will wait until later."

Zabuza grunted. "Hai," said Shisui, giving the _eight children_ another wary glance.

"Oh, and Shisui," Hatake turned towards him, an inscrutable expression on the sliver of his face that was visible.

"Hai?" Shisui answered warily.

"Why," said Hatake slowly, "is my ferocious war hound cuddling in your shirt?"

Shisui glanced down, as if he had forgotten the furry lump on his chest. "Ask your ferocious war hound," he grumbled, disgruntled.

"He thought a badger would eat him," Zabuza interjected helpfully.

Hatake squinted slowly between the two of them before shaking his head and moving away.

"Thanks for watching out for my precious ninken, Shisui," Shisui muttered under his breath as he leapt towards the front of the group. "No problem, Taichou, they don't drool as much as you do."

One of the kids, the pink-haired girl, choked on a surprised giggle.

"What was that?" Hatake asked mildly from across the clearing, a dangerous gleam in his eye.

"Your ninken are delightful, and it's an honor to work with you, sir," Shisui said without missing a beat, and made a hasty retreat into the forest.

Nightfall saw them within the forests of Tetsu no Kuni without incident. By that time, Shisui had gained another passenger - a shaggy-haired boy that clung to his neck like a limpet and made no noise whatsoever. Bisuke, meanwhile, made a disgruntled noise and stuck his entire head back into Shisui's flak jacket.

Hatake called a halt in a small clearing with towering trees that did little to shield them from the wind whipping through the trunks.

Shisui crouched to let the kid off; he stared at Shisui with black-rimmed eyes for about five seconds in complete silence before wandering off to where the others huddled at the center of the clearing. Bemused, Shisui watched him go before giving a mental shrug and turning to put up the safety seal outside the perimeter of the camp.

With a familiarity born of repetition, Haku unsealed a tent from his storage scroll, while Itachi had already begun collecting fallen branches for a fire. Zabuza had vanished from across the other side of the clearing, presumably to set up traps.

Hatake ghosted up to his side as he unfolded a paper seal and pressed it up against the smooth bark of a tree five meters from the camp.

"The children," he said.

Shisui pushed his chakra into the seal, and it lit up in a flash of blue.

"They'll need to be interviewed," Hatake went on. "The probability that one is a plant is...not nonexistent."

Shisui paused and turned. "Where exactly did these 'unknowns' come from?"

Hatake's eye slid back towards the camp. "That redhead you were carrying is the Ichibi jinchuuriki."

Shisui did not grab the other man by the collar, but it was a close thing. "What?" he hissed.

"Intelligence suggested he kidnapped his sister, the Kazekage's oldest child, and escaped from Sunagakure, but that clearly doesn't appear to be the case," Hatake continued, as if he hadn't just told Shisui he'd been piggybacking the human personification of an extinction level event for the better part of the day.

" _What_?" Shisui's voice came out faintly strangled.

"Exactly what they're doing _here_ , with the Four, remains to be seen," Hatake said almost absently.

Deep breath, Shisui. Strangling your commanding officer is _not_ the answer. "Argh," said Shisui.

"The youngest of the Four is not here," Hatake ignored Shisui's incoherent sputtering. "But I believe the Hyuga boy is a close Branch relative. The remaining two are a complete mystery, but the boy moves with some training already."

Shisui opened his mouth, then closed it again wordlessly.

"Interview the girls," Hatake ordered. "Find out why they're here."

"Hai," Shisui barely had time to get out before Hatake was striding away again. Shisui stared at his back, then at the tree in front of him. His life was absolutely ridiculous.

He let out a short breath and went to put up the rest of the seals.

Shisui stared at the girl. The girl stared at the ground. Shisui cleared his throat. "Hi," he said.

The girl peeked up at him through dusty pink bangs and said nothing.

"I'm Shisui," he soldiered on valiantly. "What's your name?"

"Sakura," she mumbled, training her eyes back on the ground.

"That's a pretty name," Shisui offered. "Can I call you Sakura-chan?"

The girl scuffed at the dirt with one sandal and nodded mutely.

"So, Sakura, where're you from?"

"Konohagakure no Sato in Hi no Kuni," she answered after a pause.

Shisui crossed an item off his mental list. "Konoha, huh? Why'd you leave?"

The little girl fidgeted. "Me'n Tou-san went to Kanazawa 'cause he needed acorn flour," she told the dirt. "But the ninja came at night and Tou-san told me to get under the wagon and then he fell and he wouldn't move and he was bleeding a lot." She looked up at Shisui with solemn eyes. "He's dead," she told him, matter-of-fact.

Shisui swallowed. "I'm sorry, Sakura-chan." Sakura looked back down. "Then what happened?" Shisui prompted after a long pause.

"Naruto got under the wagon too," she said, swinging her feet back and forth. "The ninja were chasing him but the dog mask fought them off but they hurt him too. Dog-mask told Sai to take us somewhere safe so we ran. Sai knew where the secret hiding place was."

She spoke like a war survivor, numb and detached. "Who's Sai?" asked Shisui automatically, brushing the stray thoughts away.

A small smile appeared on her face. "Sai is weird," she told him. "He had a mask, too, like the dog-mask, except with a mouse face on it." Anbu trainee, then. "He helps Temari take care of us."

Temari - the Kazekage's daughter.

"Is Temari nice to you?" Shisui asked.

Sakura nodded. "Mhmm. She tells us where to find food and how to cook and ninja stuff."

Survival 101 - Academy students would have a good grasp on this by their third year. "Is she strong?" he prompted.

"Yeah. She knows lots of cool stuff and she's good at taijutsu and she taught us wall walking."

 _Wall walking_ \- Temari had to be genin level, at least.

"How did you meet Temari?"

The girl fussed with the edge of her shirt. "Neko-sensei took us to a new village and Naruto met Gaara in the market and took him back with him. Temari's his sister so she came too."

Shisui nodded encouragingly. "Right. So, er, what do you think about Gaara?"

Sakura paused noticeably. "He's strong," she said.

Shisui narrowed his eyes. "Does he scare you?"

Sakura shrugged. "Someone was chasing us once and Gaara made the sand crush him. He had the headband thing with the funny squished rectangle - " she tapped her own forehead. "- so Neko-sensei said it was okay, just that once, but Temari got kind of angry and they both told him not to do it again."

Used sand to crush him. Kami. This girl probably had PTSD.

"But he's never hurt you?" Shisui asked, just to make sure.

The girl scowled up at him, surprisingly ferocious. "No," she snapped. "He doesn't hurt any of us."

"Good," said Shisui, for lack of anything else to say. Sakura subsided, mollified.

"How did you meet Neko-sensei?" he asked, changing tack.

"She came to the secret hiding place too," Sakura explained. "And Neji and Hinata and Sasuke and Hanabi were with her. She told all of us it wasn't safe and we had to leave, so we left."

Shisui hummed. "I see. Thank you for telling me this, Sakura-chan."

"She didn't want to take me with her," the girl said instead, staring up at him conspiratorially. "She said there were too many kids already. But Naruto wouldn't leave without me."

And with that, as Shisui sat frozen, she hopped off her rock and wandered back to the center of the camp.

"Shit," Shisui sighed.

"Hi, my name's Shisui. It's Temari, right?" The girl gave him an eerily close approximation of Akino's _are you dumb_ face. Shisui smiled back, unconcerned. "Can I call you Temari-chan?"

"Fine," said the girl, in a manner that indicated it was anything other than fine.

Shisui coughed. "Right. Temari-chan. You must know how it looks - the Kazekage's daughter with a couple of Konoha's missing heirs."

The girl raised an eyebrow. "I don't know. How does it look?"

Direct approach it was. "Why did you leave Sunagakure?" he asked.

"Why did you leave Konohagakure?" she snipped back.

Shisui gave her his best, bitter, _I have seen some shit_ smile. "I was kidnapped and experimented on for my genkai kekkei after a village elder stole my eye."

Temari's eyes widened, but she quickly rallied. "That would have been my brother, unless I got him out," she said, tilting her chin up. "My father sent Anbu and assassins after Gaara. The night we left, he sent my uncle to kill him."

Shisui blinked. Well, shit. He should have known better than to hope her story would be any better than Sakura's.

"I heard reports that he was unable to control his sand," he continued, after taking a moment to scrape his mental composure back together. "Are they true?" _Are we all in danger of being smashed into little wet blobs in our sleep?_

"They were," said the girl, unconcerned, and Shisui's heart dropped for a split second. "But he has control over it now."

"I see," said Shisui noncommittally. "How did that come about?"

"He broke my arm, on accident." Temari didn't hesitate. "And after that, he had enough incentive to control it."

"Okay," he said, after a pause. "What rank were you, Temari-chan?"

Shisui caught flash of temper in her eyes, before it vanished into cool composure. "I was an Academy student," she answered neutrally.

Shisui raised an eyebrow. "You have an impressive knowledge base and developed chakra system for an Academy student," he noted.

"Yes," said Temari. "If only it mattered to the Academy sensei."

Whoa, sore spot. "Maybe your sensei just wanted to make sure you had a childhood," he suggested, quashing a pang of regret - it was a luxury he never had - or Itachi, or Hatake, or even Zabuza.

Temari tilted her head to the side. "Maybe," she said, in a tone that said it was most definitely not.

Well, Shisui wasn't here to find out about whatever internal politics _that_ probably involved just yet. "So, how did you end up as the, er, single mother of seven?"

Temari's mouth quirked unwillingly into her first real smile. "Dragged in by the cat," she said dryly. "Gaara and I had been chased by Anbu halfway through Ame. We stopped in a village to steal food - well, I did, and Gaara wandered off while I was pickpocketing at the market. When I found him, this little blond kid was just yammering away at him - and Gaara let him." Temari shrugged. "Nobody's been nice to Gaara besides me, so I was a little suspicious at first, but he said there were other kids with him and they had a dry place to stay and food." She shrugged again. "I figured if it was an orphanage, Gaara and I could get back out easily."

"Was it just the eight of you, then?"

Another distant smile. "At first, yeah," said Temari. "But then Neko-sensei came back." Her smile turned wry. "Sai probably called her. She was pretty mad at Naruto, at first, for bringing back strange children, but once she figured out we weren't a threat - and then who we were - she was kind of okay with it."

Shisui pasted a skeptical expression on his face. "Just like that?"

Temari rolled her eyes. "Well, it wasn't that simple. She didn't even come back for a couple weeks, and when she did, I'd been helping the others out. Did you know they'd been eating instant ramen raw? Because they didn't know how to cook it?" Her eyes were fond, despite the derisive tone. "I taught them how to cook, and pickpocket, and some basic shinobi skills."

"That's a lot of effort, for a bunch of kids you didn't even know," Shisui pointed out.

"Yeah," said Temari, unconcerned.

"You care for them."

"Yeah," repeated Temari fiercely, tilting her chin up to stare at him defiantly. "I wouldn't let anyone hurt them." _Not even you_ went unspoken. She jerked a thumb back at the camp. "Can I go? One of those idiots is going to burn themselves playing with the fire."

"Yeah, go ahead," said Shisui, and watched her stride back to the center of the camp, inserting herself neatly into the huddle of children next to the fire.

"Shit," Shisui muttered empathetically.

"If any of them are spies, their cover is thorough," Hatake concluded, glancing back towards the fire. Zabuza was perched on a fallen tree a little ways away from the puppy pile of children, facing out into the darkened forest.

"Sakura seems harmless," Shisui agreed slowly. "And I didn't sense anything malicious from Temari, though both Sakura and Hinata confirmed she is capable of at least genin-level skills."

"Sai as well," said Hatake. "He claimed to have been recruited from the orphanage at age seven, and that he had been in the Anbu trainee program for a year before the Fall."

Shisui and Itachi exchanged glances. "Is that normal?" asked Shisui

"Gekkou was tapped for Anbu when he was seven," Hatake mused. "Uzuki at nine. It's not too unusual."

"There is a possibility he is a Root trainee," said Itachi.

All three were quiet.

"It's unlikely," said Hatake almost reluctantly. "My sharingan couldn't pick up any traces of genjutsu or deception from him."

Shisui grimaced. "You used that on a ten-year-old?"

Hatake's eye narrowed. "It was necessary. He won't remember it."

"Sakura has the least reason to be here," noted Itachi after a pause. "She is the logical suspect for a plant."

Shisui shook his head. "You've seen the way she moves. No way she's anything more than an Academy student, and a beginning one at that."

"She was only orphaned during the Fall," Hatake pointed out. "Danzo doesn't like recruits with attachments. The fact that the Kazekage's children are here, however, is...odd."

Shisui snorted. "Can it be anything other than a massive coincidence?"

"Coincidences don't exist," quoted Itachi.

Shisui resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "So the Yondaime Kazekage heard that some clan kids from Konoha went missing and decided to send his daughter, not even a genin, and his youngest son, _the Ichibi jinchuuriki_ , on a gallivant through the minor lands in hopes of conveniently running into these supposedly runaway kids, while as-publically-as-you-can-unpublically admitting they'd left Sunagakure?"

"I suppose not," Itachi conceded after a pause. "Though given the circumstances, it is strange that Cat-15 took them in."

"Maybe it was some kind of...latent female maternal instinct," Hatake suggested halfheartedly.

Shisui snorted. "Let's not pretend you know anything about _females_ , Taichou. You have to admit it's strategic, gaining authority over another jinchuuriki."

Hatake rolled his visible eye and jerked his head at Itachi. "Is the jinchuuriki stable?"

"He seems to have his beast under control," said Itachi.

Shisui went to nod agreement but hesitated. "His sister seems to have a lot of influence over him," he said cagily. Over _it_. "And the rest of them."

"We'll watch for that," concluded Hatake. "For now it seems they'd be hostile if we tried to separate any of them."

"They've been through a lot together," Shisui mused, turning towards the huddle of children.

"We'll have to take care of their training," Hatake added grimly.

Shisui jerked his head up incredulously, but Itachi had on his I-agree-but-I-don't-necessarily-like-it face on, which was marginally different from his resting face. "They're kids," he protested. "They've been living on the run for years. They deserve to _be_ kids for a bit."

Hatake's tone was icily rational. "Not one of us wasn't on the battlefield at their age. It's impractical to think the battle won't come to them - it's better that they have the tools to defend themselves."

"And when you need another soldier or two for the war?" Shisui challenged, narrowing his eye.

"We are all soldiers," Hatake drawled, but his stare was deadly serious. "When we are called to fight, we fight."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Neji Is A Pretentious Little Shit 

But he's got a heart in there somewhere. Probably.

* * *

MISSION REPORT: D-14

All allied targets henceforth designated by number code only: AT1, AT2, AT3, and AT4. Allied combatants x2 designated ACHN and ACNS. Allied noncombatant x1 designated ANHS.

All allied targets successfully extracted to [REDACTED], [REDACTED] kilometers from Konohagakure.

AT1, AT3, ANHS sustained moderate fatigue, light dehydration. ACHN sustained mild fatigue. ACNS sustained moderate fatigue, light damage to left chest and left upper arm.

Current course: hold position for 48 hours. Acquire provisions and medical supplies, additional supplies for AT2. Reevaluate security of location.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

* * *

Crouched behind Hinata in front of the fire, Neji narrowed his eyes at the shinobi placing seals on the trees. "They will wish to interrogate us," he said in a low voice.

"We have nothing to hide," Temari said flippantly, but her posture was tense.

"I moreso than you," muttered Neji.

"Unless they are actually Konoha agents," Sai pointed out, and all of them turned to scrutinize the nearest - the one-eyed masked shinobi with grey hair - Hatake Kakashi, Temari had named him.

"Would a Konoha agent work with a Kiri nukenin, though?" Sakura wondered aloud.

"They're not Konoha agents," Sasuke snapped - quietly.

Neji sneered. "I suppose you consider yourself unbiased." Sasuke puffed up indignantly.

"Shut up," Temari snapped, distracted, before he could respond. "This isn't the time to pick fights."

Neji glared at both her and the Uchiha spawn half-heartedly, but she was right. He turned back to look at the grey-haired shinobi, only to start when he discovered the man was already staring at him.

"Ne, Neji, I think he's looking at you," whispered the blond brat in a voice that was much too loud to really be called a whisper.

"Shut up, Naruto," muttered Sasuke, rolling his eyes.

Hatake raised an eyebrow and jerked his head towards the edge of the camp in a clear summons.

Neji reflexively traded a glance with Temari. "Watch over Hinata-sama," he said automatically, his mouth suddenly dry.

"Yeah," Temari murmured and gave him an solemn nod.

Gathering his composure about him, Neji found his feet and followed.

The shinobi leaned against the trunk of a tree and gestured at a fallen log across from him. Neji eyed him, then the log, and perched gingerly, angled in a way to keep both Hatake and the others in his normal line of view.

"What's your name?" The grey-haired man tucked his hands in his pockets, carefully nonthreatening.

Neji knew for a fact that the shinobi knew what his name was. "Hyuuga Neji," he answered anyways, straightening his back and lifting his chin.

The man hummed nonchalantly. "And do you know my name?"

With a suspicious glance, Neji said, "Hatake Kakashi. Former jounin of Konohagakure."

"Hmm," the man said again. "Why don't you tell me about how you came to leave Konoha?"

Neji turned his head towards the fire. "The night the Sandaime Hokage was assassinated, I was Hinata-sama's appointed guard."

"A little young to be entrusted with the heiress, hmm? You would have been eight years old?"

Neji hid a scowl. "I was excelling in the Academy and with my studies in the Juuken style. Hiashi-sama decided I should begin my responsibilities as a member of the Branch family."

Hatake's expression didn't change. "You must have resented that," he noted idly.

Neji tamped down the heat rising in his throat like bile. "It is an honor to serve Hinata-sama in whatever way I can," he snapped.

"Hn." The shinobi eyed him for a moment. "You were keeping watch. And then?"

"There was a disturbance at the front of the compound. I could see attackers from the front and rear of the compound, battling the guards and those of my clan that rushed to respond." He hesitated, a frown settling on his face unconsciously. "There was a - a shockwave. It knocked everyone off their feet. The Anbu came then. Neko-sensei."

Hatake leaned forward a little. "And did Neko-sensei ever tell you her name?"

Neji shook his head. "No. Only her codename: Cat-15."

"And you just went with her?" the shinobi asked.

"Yes," Neji bristled. "The compound was under attack, and as far as I could see, the rest of the village was as well. Makoto-nii confirmed that the protocol was legitimate, and believed that the heiress and her sister would be significantly more secure at a safe house instead of in the village during an invasion. I followed his lead."

Hatake nodded thoughtfully. "What can you tell me about Makoto?"

"Hyuuga Makoto. Twenty-four years of age, chuunin at age eighteen," Neji recited. "Retired from the General Corps at age twenty-two following a traumatic mission. Stationed at the main compound, on rotation as the personal guard for Hyuuga Hanabi."

By the time Hatake let him go back to the others, Neji was strung out and on edge. The other one-eyed shinobi had pulled both Sakura and Temari away and brought them back, with Hinata-sama now staring at the ground between them. At another quadrant, Naruto was loudly extolling the virtues of a particular ramen shop in Konoha to a blank-faced Itachi.

"That was long," Temari noted, sending a glance over his shoulder towards Hatake.

"Hn," said Neji, glaring at the shinobi interrogating Hinata. He was definitely not in the mood for conversation.

"His name's Shisui," Temari said, following his stare. "He asked a bunch of questions about why Gaara and I left Suna. What did Hatake want to know?"

"Everything," Neji snapped. "Why I am here, my dead cousin Makoto, how we met Neko-sensei. And you."

"He's calling me," Sasuke cut in, voice uncharacteristically quiet.

They all turned. Sure enough, Hatake was staring at the youngest Uchiha.

"I don't think he'll hurt you," whispered Sakura, huddled between Gaara and the fire.

"He will just want answers," agreed Neji begrudgingly. "He likely wants to eliminate any potential bias from either of the Uchiha questioning you."

"Don't keep him waiting, then," said Temari, nodding at Sasuke encouragingly.

Neji watched him go before turning back to glare at the Uchiha with Hinata-sama once again. Shisui.

For a moment, the five were quiet. Temari watched the trees behind his back. The ever-present shifting of the jinchuuriki's sand hissed softly below the whisper of the breeze.

He heard it first, turning his head towards the almost imperceptible scrabbling.

"Cover me," Sai breathed.

Neji shifted to block him from Shisui's view, while Temari pulled Sakura over next to her, covering him from Sasuke's brother. He stared around the clearing warily, but none of the shinobi paid them any mind other than a cursory glance.

Sai slipped a small scroll out of his pocket and unfurled it just enough for a small black mouse to hurl itself at the blank paper.

Neji glanced down at the single word and his eyes widened, darting up automatically to meet Temari's as Sai continued to stare at the message:

Clear.

Clear: understood, message received.

Clear: free of danger.

Clear: definite.

Clear: permission given to proceed.

Clear: far away from, removed.

Sai snapped the scroll shut.

Clear: Neko-sensei wasn't coming. They were on their own.

Finally, Temari's mouth quirked in a wry smile. "I guess these guys are for real," she said at last, giving Sakura's shoulder a squeeze, but her eyes were hard.

Sakura smiled tremulously. "We're safe," she whispered, but her shoulders remained hunched and tense. She didn't really believe it.

Neji didn't either.

"It's Neji-kun, right?"

Neji, who had been blinking groggily at the smoldering remains of the fire as dawn lit the edge of the trees, jerked his head up sharply. The older Uchiha - Shisui - was wearing a pack and a travelling cloak slung over his shoulders. "Hai," he answered shortly, taking a quick glance around the rest of the clearing. While all the other shinobi were up - minus the youngest, the one that looked around Neji's own age - none of them seemed inclined to move.

"Can you hold a good henge for a couple of hours?" Shisui asked, and Neji's attention snapped back to him.

"Yes," replied Neji, allowing his suspicion to color his voice.

Shisui nodded. "Good. How about...hm. Sakura-chan?"

The pink-haired girl flinched at the corner of his eye. "Yeah," she squeaked, then frowned and cleared her throat. "I can do it," she said, jerking her head up defiantly even as her voice quavered.

Like a kitten growling at a panther. Pitiful, perhaps ill-advised and quite unlikely to be taken seriously, but commendable.

"Excellent," Shisui said cheerfully. "I'm heading into town to pick up some supplies. Why don't you two accompany me?"

He stared at the Uchiha silently as Sakura turned nervous eyes on Neji. He nudged Temari with his foot. She woke immediately from a light sleep, sitting up quickly with squinted eyes. "Why?" he asked slowly.

"I figured you'll need more clothes, so I thought you could help me pick some out," he answered readily, the hint of a smile crinkling the corners of his mouth.

Neji narrowed his eyes.

"Why them?" Temari cut in, voice rough with sleep.

Shisui blinked slowly. "Tetsu can get rather cold, especially in the winter, and you all seem to be kitted out for Iwa summers," he said. "Neji-kun and Sakura-chan are pretty representative of the sizes of clothes the rest of your group will need, and it's less suspicious if I go into town with two kids versus eight."

"Hm," said Temari, and raised a brow at Neji.

He gritted his teeth. "Very well," he said. "Sakura?"

The girl twitched again. "Okay," she agreed.

"Good. Great," said Shisui. "Come on, then. It's a bit of a run, but we can get breakfast when we hit town. Sound good?"

Sakura nodded once, tentatively. Neji said nothing, but rose to his feet gracefully.

"Cool," said Shisui, eyes flicking between the two. "The rest of you will probably start moving again in an hour or so," he told Temari, who nodded, the sleep-fog fading from her eyes. He gave Temari a friendly nod and turned slightly to offer Hatake a two-fingered salute before moving away.

"Watch over Hinata-sama," Neji told her, before following the Shisui out of the camp.

Shisui set a pace that was a light jog for himself and an easy run for Neji, but just a few kilometers later, he could see Sakura struggling to control her breathing out of the corner of his eye. As a civilian-born, she was the weakest of the others - Naruto, though an orphan, had the benefit of seemingly endless stamina, and the best efforts of the Clan's training had managed to give Hinata-sama an edge over the other girl.

Perhaps they should have brought along Hinata-sama instead, though she would doubtless have made them look suspicious with her stuttering and inability to meet another's eyes. The Clan had yet to train her out of that habit, unbefitting of their heiress as it was.

Sakura's breaths degraded into harsh panting. Neji eyed her out of the corner of his eye. Blotches of red stained her cheeks, but her eyes glinted with stubbornness.

Shisui's effortless strides slowed to a stop. Neji stopped as well, and Sakura stumbled to a halt beside him. "This is a good place to take a break," said Shisui. "Neji-kun, Sakura-chan, do either of you want some water?"

Neji took a few deep breaths to slow his heartbeat. "Yes," he said. Sakura, leaning against the tree with her eyes closed looking rather faint, did not respond. "We will both require water," he amended grudgingly.

Shisui handed him a canteen, regarding Sakura with a mixture of bemusement and mild alarm. Unused to civilian weakness perhaps. "We have a few kilometers left," the shinobi said, crossing his arms comfortably. "Sakura-chan, I'll carry you until we're a kilometer or two out, and then we'll walk the rest of the way."

"I can run," Sakura rasped, opening her eyes at last and hauling herself upright. She swayed on her feet. After one last sip from the canteen, Neji passed it to her.

She was stubborn, but she didn't have the strength to back it up. It was a foolish claim to make.

"You need to save your strength," Shisui said firmly. "Once we reach the road, you need to be able to keep up a constant henge until we're out of town. If you drop the henge because you're too tired, all of us will be in jeopardy."

Neji eyed the girl out of the corner of his eye, increasingly dubious.

"Neji-kun?" said Shisui. Neji turned politely. "Are you able to continue running?"

Neji allowed just the hint of a frown onto his face. The Hyuuga trained their children young, and he was the best the Hyuuga clan had produced in generations - his skills were genin level at least. "Yes," he said shortly.

Shisui merely nodded in acknowledgement, shifting his pack around to his front. "If you're ready, Sakura-chan?"

Sakura skittered up to him uncomfortably, keeping Neji between them for as long as possible before approaching the Uchiha teen and clinging awkwardly to his neck. For his part, Shisui crouched remarkably patiently until the girl had wrapped her legs around his waist.

"Here we go," the Uchiha said cheerfully. They went.

Shisui set a faster pace this time, the kind of run that left Neji breathing hard but not desperately. He was aware, of course, that the shinobi was still moving much more slowly than he normally would when travelling on his own, and the thought of the allowances he was making for Neji, who wasn't as strong, rankled. At least he was able to run himself, though. He spared a quick glance for Sakura. She looked vaguely seasick.

After perhaps half an hour of this, at which point Neji had begun taking deliberately deep breaths so as not to gasp for air, Shisui slowed, then stopped, crouching to let Sakura off.

Neji paced slowly with half his usual grace, legs stiff and uncooperative.

"We're a couple klicks out of town, so we'll take another break and walk in," Shisui announced, passing the water to Neji.

He took it gratefully, forcing himself not to gulp.

Sakura brushed her hands down her shirt absently. She was frowning, hair falling over her eyes.

"This is the important part," Shisui continued, his more tone hardening almost imperceptibly. Sakura's spine straightened, and she looked up. Neji set down the canteen.

"This is a town that samurai are known to frequent, and shinobi are very much not welcome here," Shisui warned. "Should the samurai discover who or what you are, you will at the least be forcibly removed from the country, or at worst, captured and eventually killed. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Neji. Sakura echoed him quietly.

"Good," said Shisui, and took stock of their expressions. "I'm not trying to deliberately scare you," he said, "but this is much more dangerous than even flying under the radar in Tsuchi no Kuni. You need to stay alert at all times."

"We understand," Neji assured him, voice unwavering, but he could feel the shot of adrenaline that surged through his veins at the thought of discovery.

Shisui let out a short breath. "Okay. This is our cover: the two of you will be my younger brother and sister. Our family are merchants who specialize in metal products, like cookware and basins, and are currently at a town in the east to resupply. The three of us are here to acquire clothing and other provisions before we all head further north." He considered them thoughtfully.

"Henges are easiest to hold when they're simple," Shisui continued. "So each of us will change our hair color to a medium-dark brown and our eye color to dark grey. Watch," he ordered, hands flickering through seals.

His eyes lightened and his hair changed color without even a wisp of smoke, bleeding into a shade lighter than the trees surrounding them with just a hint of red. "Try to match the colors as best you can." He glanced between them. "Neji-kun, go ahead."

Neji narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing the shinobi's hair. "Hai," he acknowledged, and began going through the hand seals. "Henge," he muttered, and blinked away the smoke.

"Good," Shisui said approvingly. "Your hair is a little darker, but that's fine. Better, even."

Neji suppressed a frown and tilted his head forward until the shoulder-length strands dangled next to his eyes. They were indeed a couple shades darker than Shisui's.

"Now, Sakura-chan?" Shisui prompted.

The girl concentrated on her hands, forming the seals precisely and confidently, if not quickly. "Henge!" she said firmly, and was enveloped in a thin veil of smoke.

Neji leaned forward despite himself. Sakura's hair and eyes were exactly the same shades as Shisui's. He caught himself scowling and wiped the expression from his face.

"Nicely done, Sakura-chan," Shisui praised. "You have a good eye for detail."

She beamed widely. "Thanks, Shisui-san!" she chirped.

"Try not to say my name while we're in town," Shisui warned. "You can call me onii-san and I'll call you two imouto and otouto." He gave each of them a careful look. "Okay, let me just…" he closed his eyes and flashed through hand seals again, and the slant of his eyes flattened, his nose narrowed, and his face elongated.

Neji stared in morbid fascination. The Uchiha had a darker complexion now, Sakura's nose, and a bit of Neji's eyes. Watching the process somehow made the changes seem profoundly wrong. At his other side, Sakura was unable to tear her gaze away, eyes wide with a horrified interest.

Shisui opened his eyes to their stares. "It's just a henge, same as yours," he reassured them, just a hint of amusement in his voice. Neji nodded slowly, but seeing that face talk after he'd seen it warp like some sort of melting candle made it even more strange.

He could see that face without flinching, of course, by the time they reached the town. It was a largely unremarkable place - wooden buildings with rusting tin roofs, cobblestone streets, precarious streetlights - somewhat ambiguously ringed by a low stone wall.

The townspeople largely ignored them as they walked down the main street, busied with drawing water from a well, preparing the days' meals, or housekeeping, doors flung open as occupants called out friendly overtures to acquaintances passing by. A butcher hacked at the meaty ribcage of a cow, his apprentice sharpening cleavers on the other side of the yard. A trio of boys darted across the road, deftly avoiding a man with a handcart full of sacks of rice or barley or wheat as they taunted and called out to each other.

Sakura hovered closely at Neji's side, which he endured with a long-suffering grace, even when she tread on the back of his sandal.

Shisui's hunter's prowl had transitioned into a flat-footed tramp, but he strode forward just as quickly. "What do you two want to eat?" he asked lightly. "It's a bit late for breakfast, but we could call it brunch."

"Dango," Sakura said wistfully, almost immediately. "Anko dango."

"If you meant lunch food," Neji cut in delicately, "perhaps soba would be appropriate."

"Soba and dango. Sounds good," Shisui agreed cheerfully. "Come on, you two. I bet we can find some in the market district."

That was not a bet Neji would take. He followed readily as Shisui headed towards the loudest part of the town.

Many of the stores were open-air, with boxes and crates of fresh produce lined up outside storefronts. A barbecue restaurant had a cart with steaming whole roast chickens and half a small pig parked outside. Neji dodged a woman carrying a basket heaping with loaves of bread, dragging Sakura with him by the sleeve.

"There," said Sakura distractedly, stumbling into his side. "It's a noodle shop."

"So it is," Shisui said, and changed course for the restaurant.

It was a clean enough place, Neji supposed, but he sat down gingerly all the same on the rickety wooden bench and eyed the menu inked onto the wall.

"Kamonanban for me, I think," decided Shisui aloud. "What about you two?"

"Nishin soba," answered Neji. It had been so long since he'd had soba, longer still since he'd had his favorite topping, herring, with it.

"Hiyashi soba," Sakura chimed in, expression a little dreamy. Neji eyed her warily.

Temari had talked once about how she'd missed dorayaki, one of her favorite childhood foods, when her father forbade the children from pastries, and years later she'd snuck one in the market. It hadn't tasted the way she remembered - just cloyingly sweet and sticky. Time had idealized the memory.

This was most definitely not the case for Neji's nishin soba. In fact, it tasted even better than he remembered. It could have been due in part to the fact that this was the first time he'd actually eaten in a restaurant in over a year - even on those rare occasions when the group had scraped together enough money to buy a ready-made meal, they'd taken it to go and shared it in the relative safety of their home base.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten so comfortably. Or so much.

Too much, actually.

Neji glanced down at his bowl. It was still at least half full, but he didn't think he could eat another bite.

Sakura, who had been methodically taking small bites of her own soba, seemed to have arrived to the same conclusion - she stared at the remains of her meal despondently.

"Well then," said Shisui. "I suppose we should get these to go."

Their next stop was a general clothing-and-miscellaneous store towards the edge of the market district. Inside was dim and musty, with most of the light coming in from the store windows. Neji paused just inside the door, surveying the rows of racks of clothing.

Shisui glanced back at them. "Why don't you two take a look around?" He suggested. "Let me know if you see anything you like, and we'll see if it's something we can get, hmm?"

"Hai," said Neji, more than willing to take the chance for relative privacy. He tugged Sakura along by her grip on his sleeve into the racks of clothes.

Sakura touched the clothes tentatively, as if afraid of breaking or dirtying them, then with more interest. "Ooh," she murmured to herself, fingering a pink sequined shirt.

"That is extremely impractical," Neji told her, brushing it out of her grip distractedly.

Across the store Shisui had approached the storekeeper. "...suitable for winter," he was saying.

"Ah, yes," said the storekeeper. "We do have a nice selection of sweaters, jackets, and cloaks, if you'd like to take a look." He bustled out from behind the counter, leading Shisui around to the back of the store.

Neji nudged Sakura to the next set of racks to keep them in sight. She went willingly enough - these held a selection of plain pants, and Sakura seemed to approve of the fabric. "We all need these," she muttered to him.

He eyed them critically. "They seem alright," he allowed, before returning his attention to Shisui.

"And what about these?" Shisui was saying, gesturing at something out of Neji's line of sight.

"Ah! Good choice. Those cloaks are waterproof canvas, lined with bear fur, adjustable length through this detachable…"

"Do you think we need shirts?" asked Sakura, wandering to a shelf stacked with shirts of soft fabric.

Neji glanced over. "Not those," he dismissed. "Those will tear much too easily."

" - haven't you sold any?" asked Shisui curiously.

"Ah," the storekeeper responded. "Well, er, they are a little...ah...heavy."

Shisui leaned over, presumably to pick one up. "I see," he said blandly. He raised his voice. "Otouto? Imouto? Would you come here, please?"

Sakura dragged a hand over the shirts reluctantly. "Come," Neji hissed impatiently, fighting the urge to roll his eyes, and forcibly maneuvered her by the shoulder.

The cloaks in question were a grey-brown and hooded. Shisui had one in his hand. "Try this on, otouto," he said, already fanning it out to drape over Neji.

Neji's eyes flashed to the storekeeper, who'd opened his mouth as if to say something, hesitated, and closed it. Shisui dropped the cloak onto his shoulders.

Neji staggered under its weight. "What - " he muttered. The cloak was not only heavy, it was much too long - designed for an adult. It dragged on the ground.

"It is a nice cloak," Shisui said thoughtfully. "Alright. We'll take them."

Sakura eyed Neji dubiously. Neji scowled.

"You will?" said the storekeeper, surprised. "I mean, er, great! Ah, how many? Three?"

"All of them," Shisui said blithely.

"All- all of them?" the storekeeper choked out.

'All of them?' Sakura mouthed at Neji. He shrugged, just as bemused.

"Well, we are heading north," reasoned Shisui. "I'm sure my mother will be able to find a market for them when it's a little colder. I'll just take them off your hands, hmm?"

"Oh, ah - thank you?" said the storekeeper, confused.

"You're welcome," said Shisui cheerfully. "Mind boxing these up for me?"

"N-not at all," said the storekeeper hesitantly, before turning to wrestle the cloaks off the rack. "Just - just give me a moment," he said, voice strained.

"Of course," responded Shisui genially. "Imouto, otouto, did you find anything you liked?"

Sakura lit up, the strange cloaks forgotten. "We need pants," she said brightly, darting back into the racks. Shisui followed indulgently.

Neji grimaced at the folds of the disproportionately heavy cloak, leaning over to bundle up the extra cloth in his arms before he could follow.

Sakura, it seemed, successfully sold Shisui on the pants, because he ahh'ed and hmm'ed at the right moments and finally said, "Sounds good," and carried an armful to the front counter, leaving Sakura equal parts exhilarated and bewildered behind him.

"He's actually getting them," she hissed to Neji. "Is it for real? Is it an act?"

Neji narrowed his eyes and shrugged. "It could just be for our cover," he warned.

"I know," said Sakura, worrying at her lip.

Neji eyed her with some distaste until she stopped guiltily.

"Alright, kids, we're done here," said Shisui, breezing past and leaving them to follow in his wake.

Sakura glanced back as they exited the store. "We're not buying anything?" she asked, confused.

"We are. We did," said Shisui, "but I don't want to carry all that around, so Tenshu-san kindly agreed to hold onto it until we're ready to leave town." He stopped when they reached the street corner. "I've got a couple more things to grab, but why don't you two see if you can find some of the local kids to play with?" he suggested.

Neji narrowed his eyes, barely short of a glare, as Sakura's mouth twisted uncertainly. "I do not play ," Neji said derisively.

Shisui glanced up at the sky for a brief moment. "Okay, look," he said, crouching to their level and lowering his voice. "Children are pretty perceptive about whatever goes on or potential dangers around a town and usually give out information out more freely than adults. It looks weird if a grownup starts chatting to all the kids, but you two have the advantage of age, yeah? Talk to the local kids, see what to look out for around here."

Sakura glanced at Neji. "We could do that," she said.

Neji frowned. "Very well," he conceded grudgingly.

"Try not to ask anything too directly," Shisui added, almost as an afterthought. "And make your your henge doesn't slip." He squinted up at the sky. "Let's meet back here when the sun's directly overhead - it should be about an hour."

"Hai," said Neji, and pulled Sakura in the opposite direction as the Uchiha turned away. He eyed her carefully. "Can you keep that up?" he asked, jerking his head at her hair.

Sakura considered for a moment. "Yes," she said confidently.

"Hn." Neji surveyed the streets dolefully. "I suppose we should find some children , then."

Sakura seemed unreasonably cheerful at this proposition. She let go of his sleeve to run ahead, and consequently was the one who found a small cluster of boys near the wall off the market district.

"Hi!" she called, skipping forward. Neji belatedly grabbed for her and missed. "I'm Kanako. Can we play with you?"

All four boys turned to stare at them. One of them had strong, pointed features and looked just a little younger than Shisui; the others all seemed to be around Neji's age.

"You're a girl," said the shortest, scrunching his nose and sweeping dirty blonde hair out of his eyes.

Sakura folded her arms belligerently as Neji came up behind her. "And?" she demanded.

"Girls play with dolls and their hair," the boy retorted.

Neji glowered at the boy over Sakura's shoulder, who scowled right back at them.

"Kawa - " the oldest began admonishingly, but Sakura interrupted him.

"Well, I don't," she snapped. "I like playing Bandits, and Hunters and Monsters!"

A pause. One of the other boys snorted. "She's got you there, Kawa."

"Shut up, Kokkaku," Kawa retorted good-naturedly. "All right, if you like playing Bandits , you can play with us. I'm Kawa, this is Kokkaku, that - " he pointed at the last boy, with black hair and dark brown eyes who raised a hand in a lazy wave " - is Hikaru, and Awasaru's 'watching' us."

"What he means," said the teen, "is I attempt to minimize the property damage. It is nice to meet you, Kanako-san, and - ?"

Neji opened his mouth, but Sakura beat him to it. "This is my brother, Jiro. He doesn't talk much." Neji frowned but didn't correct her.

"It is a pleasure," Awasaru said pleasantly, inclining his head.

"Yeah, cool," said Kawa impatiently. "So, how do you play Hunters and Monsters?"

Sakura brightened, edging closer to the group. "So one group is monsters and they come out at night and try to catch the hunters, and when they catch a hunter the hunter has to drop down on the ground until another hunter can come and save them. But if it becomes morning and they didn't get saved they become a monster too, and during the day the hunters try and catch the monsters."

The kid with brown hair and blue eyes - Kokkaku - looked doubtful.

"Kanako likes to play in the middle of the open market," Neji interjected, borrowing one of Naruto's ill-advised ideas. "Where there are more...obstacles." Chaos, more accurately.

There was a gleam in Kawa's eye that reminded him eerily of the aforementioned blonde brat. "I see," he said, a grin slowly spreading on his face.

"No, Kawa," Awasaru interjected firmly.

"But - "

" No , Kawa."

"I don't think people will take too kindly to us playing Monsters in the middle of the town, anyways," muttered Kokkaku.

Neji exchanged a glance with Sakura. "Why not?" he asked.

"You aren't from around here, are you?" Kokkaku noted, not unkindly. "Well, it's kind of an urban legend but people say the forest around here is haunted by demons and monsters."

"Yeah, sometimes people go out hunting and come back and say they saw giant white wolves with teeth like daggers that could eat a man in one bite," Kawa agreed. "Or a demon girl with a bloody grin. Merchants will come in and say they were chased by shadowy beasts at night."

"There have been increased incidents in the past month," Awasaru informed them. "The traders in the marketplace currently are most unnerved by the situation and would likely take unkindly to that sort of game."

"Aww," said Sakura, disappointment flickering across her face. "What do you like to play, then?"

"There's Pirates and Samurai," Hikaru offered.

"Bah," Kawa wrinkled his nose. "I'd rather be a rounin than a samurai or a pirate."

"Why?" asked Sakura curiously. "Samurai sound pretty cool."

"They're signing up to die early," Kawa said derisively, at the same time Hikaru said, "They are."

Kawa turned an incredulous stare on Hikaru as the other boy shrugged. "They fight pirates and protect people, that's pretty cool."

"It is a noble profession," Awasaru added. "To protect those weaker than oneself."

"Have you seen samurai before?" Sakura asked.

"They come in town sometimes," Kokkaku said. "We've all seen them at least once or twice."

"My father was a samurai," Kawa bit out. "And because of it, he died the day I was born."

For an awkward moment, the other boys and Sakura exchanged uncertain glances.

"I'd rather be a rounin," Kawa repeated. "Fight for no sword but my own. Go wherever the wind takes me, meet new people, try new foods and all that."

"You're allergic to every other thing on this earth, Kawa," said Kokkaku, rolling his eyes. "Trying new food is like flipping a coin to avoid getting stabbed."

"Speaking of flipping coins and stabbing," said Kawa. "We gotta do something. I'm so bored."

"Might I suggest a sedentary activity, such as card games?" said Awasaru, eyeing the other five.

"Noted," Kawa said cheerfully. "Let's go on the roof!"

Neji watched as the blond scrambled up the stone perimeter wall and took a flying leap across the narrow gap to the roof of a nearby store, and wondered if this was what civilian children normally did. The other three boys stared at their friend with varying degrees of exasperation.

Kawa leaned back over the edge of the roof. "C'mon, guys," he urged.

Hikaru, closest to the wall, shrugged. "To the roof," he said, and hauled himself up the wall with surprising grace.

Kokkaku rolled his eyes, muttered under his breath, and ultimately had to be heaved up the wall by Awasaru, who took the turn of events with a long-suffering air.

That left Neji and Sakura. "I'll give you a lift, Kanako-chan," said Neji.

Sakura frowned. "I can make it myself," she insisted, starting for the wall.

" Kanako ," said Neji, gritting his teeth.

Sakura hesitated. He narrowed his eyes at her. "Fine," she relented, and deigned to let him boost her up until Awasaru could swing her to the top of the wall.

From the roof, the six had an excellent vantage of the open market, particularly the section with fresh produce, a bakery, and one penned off area milling with chickens. For the first time since Oshino, Neji allowed himself to relax, removed from the bustle of the town.

"Hey," said Kawa, kicking his legs off the edge. "Hey, guys, do you dare me to steal one of old Saburo's chickens?"

"For gods' sake," muttered Kokkaku, at the same time Awasaru said, "No."

"Uh," said Sakura. Neji agreed.

But Kawa had that light in his eyes again. "I can't believe you guys are making me do this," he said gleefully, not even listening to his companions.

"We're not," Hikaru interjected helpfully, but watched the man with the chickens interestedly.

In one motion, Kawa scooted right off the edge of the roof. Sakura yelped in surprise, but none of the others reacted except for Kokkaku, who rolled his eyes again.

Neji leaned over the edge in time to see Kawa clamber off a stack of hay bales.

"This is so wild, you guys are so messed up for making me do this," he called up, and then darted toward the chicken pens.

"Is he all right?" Neji asked bemusedly, staring after the retreating back.

"Kawa's...interesting," Hikaru sighed, heaving himself up to follow the other boy over the edge of the roof. "He makes everything interesting."

"He makes everything trouble," Kokkaku growled, dropping off the roof after him.

Neji glanced back at Awasaru, the last one on the roof. Awasaru looked resigned.

"I believe it is time for Kanako and myself to depart," Neji said.

"Probably for the best," Awasaru agreed. "Kawa has a tendency to generate havoc. Safe travels, Jiro-san, Kanako-san."

"Bye, Awasaru-san," Sakura chirped, and followed Neji over the edge. "Civilians are weird," she whispered as they hurried back to the rendezvous. Behind them, the squawking of the chickens increased exponentially in volume.

"Indeed," Neji agreed, slightly disturbed by the morning's proceedings.

Shisui was waiting where they'd left him with eyes half-closed and one hand in his pocket, a burlap sack over half his height leaning against the corner at his side.

"Is that dango?" Sakura gasped, running ahead of Neji. He frowned at her back.

"With anko sauce," said Shisui, eyes crinkling in a smile. He held one stick out to her and offered the other to Neji.

Neji plucked it from his fingers and inspected it delicately. "Thank you," he said. Sakura echoed him, muffled.

Shisui swung the sack over his shoulder easily. "Did you two have fun?" he asked.

Neji glanced at Sakura, who had a mouthful of dango. "It was informative," he allowed.

"Oh?" said Shisui. "What did you learn?"

"Civilians are weird ," said Sakura empathetically.

That startled a laugh out of Shisui. "Anything else?" he asked, amused.

"Samurai come by this town every so often," Neji offered. "And pirates seem to be a genuine threat, though perhaps only along the coast."

"And there are monsters in the forest," Sakura added. "Like giant wolves."

"Hm," said Shisui.

"The townspeople are comfortable enough during the day to leave their doors open and their children unsupervised," countered Neji, narrowing his eyes at her. "The forest monsters are likely just superstition."

"There's usually a kernel of truth in urban legends," Shisui said pensively.

The side trip to the village, while uneventful, helped alleviate the monotony of travel. Neji still didn't know where they were going - the shinobi had all cryptically answered something along the lines of "a safer place" when asked. This was currently the cause of contention among Neji's group once again.

"Neko-sensei said they're alright," Sakura said doubtfully.

"We think Neko-sensei says they're alright," muttered Neji. He glared around the huddle of children that had instinctively formed after Hatake had called the last break.

"My jutsu cannot be forged," Sai countered.

"I trust them," interjected Sasuke, unsurprisingly.

"They seem pretty nice," Naruto agreed. "They feed us a lot!"

"Oh, they seem nice," Neji sneered. "Have you forgotten that a shinobi is a master of deception?"

"Enough," snapped Temari. "We've been over this. Whether or not this is a trap, we can't do anything about it yet. The chances of them killing one of us is slim. Even if they try, we have Gaara."

Neji glanced at the boy, a silent shadow at his sister's side. Although he had witnessed the jinchuuriki kill an Anbu assassin with frightening ruthlessness, he wasn't so sure Gaara would jump to anyone's defense other than Temari's, or possibly Naruto's.

Gaara wasn't paying attention to their conversation. Instead, he stared out into the forest, just the hint of a furrowed brow on his blank face.

"Gaara?" Temari prompted, her voice sharp.

"There's something out there," Gaara muttered as Neji flipped through the seals to activate his Byakugan.

With a burst of chakra, Neji let his gaze expand, sweeping past Hinata-sama as she activated her own eyes, the other children and the shinobi in the clearing, past the trees and the brush and scattered birds in the branches. He sucked in a harsh breath, his focus narrowing in on the silhouettes just on the edge of his range.

Shadowy beasts, Kawa had said. Giant white wolves with teeth like daggers.

"A-ah," Hinata stuttered. "T-there's, ah - "

"Wolves," Neji said.

"Well, if it's just forest animals - " Temari began, but Neji cut her off.

"They're not regular animals," he said tersely, watching the massive creatures lope closer, and reached for the kunai in the pouch strapped beneath his shirt. "Much too large - they're familiars."

"T-there's a s-shinobi," Hinata whispered. "R-riding on o-one."

"Sakura, Hinata, Sasuke, Naruto: stay back," Temari ordered, palming a kunai in each hand. Sai slid the tanto out of its sheath, even as Gaara stepped up to his side, the sand whispering at his feet.

"We can fight!" Naruto insisted.

"You need to guard our backs," Sai instructed calmly, even as he swept his blade back into a ready position.

"Stand down," Hatake drawled from across the clearing. "They're friendlies."

None of them relaxed.

"How is a giant wolf a friendly?" Sasuke hissed, spinning a kunai in his hand nervously.

Neji tracked the wolves' progress with narrowed eyes. "They're not acting aggressive," he noted doubtfully.

"Hm," said Temari, stepping back a little to the rest of the group.

While Hatake's posture remained loose and relaxed, the kid with the Kiri nukenin shifted uncomfortably at the Swordsman's back. Shisui sent a distracted, if reassuring smile in his direction.

When the wolves finally stalked into the clearing, Neji let his byakugan fade and caught his breath as the world returned in full color. The pair were bigger than Hatake's largest ninken and as tall as horses, with lush, snowy fur and acid-yellow eyes. They wove in and out of each others' paths as easily as leaves in the wind on feather-light paws.

From the shoulders of the lead wolf slipped a kunoichi wearing the same white pelt as her companions and a string of fangs about her throat. Despite her feral appearance, however, her eyes were sharp and assessing as she sized up the group.

"San," greeted Hatake, straightening from his slouch.

"Kakashi," the kunoichi responded, even as her eyes landed on Neji and the others curiously. "It's good to see you." She waved her hand at her wolves. "This is Yuuki, of course," she introduced, patting the one she'd been riding, "and that's Chie." She nodded her head in Neji's direction. "This is them?"

"Aa. I apologize for the short notice," said Hatake, "but they need to be out of sight as soon as possible. I'll let them introduce themselves later, but these are Uchiha Itachi, Uchiha Shisui -" Itachi dipped his head while the other offered a lazy salute, " - Momochi Zabuza, and Haku."

"Inuzuka San," said the kunoichi, ducking her head in a shallow bow before turning a fierce stare on the group of shinobi children huddled at the far end of the clearing. "We need to move fast, and it's all uphill from here," she said. "Who wants to ride with Yuuki, and who wants to go with Chie?"

It was perhaps a testament to a strange few days (or years) that none of the others kicked up much of a fuss, not even Hinata-sama - though admittedly she would be more inclined to panic and perhaps faint rather than fuss over riding a giant wolf that looked much more likely to eat them than Hatake's placid ninken.

"This is awesome," Naruto cackled quietly - for him. "Ne, Neji?"

Neji grimaced as the blond's arms tightened around his waist. He tangled his hands further into the wolf's ruff and didn't respond. Predictably, Naruto was undeterred.

"D'you think I can get a wolf?" he wondered out loud. "That would be so cool!"

"You don't 'get' a wolf, idiot," Sasuke muttered from behind Naruto, his words nearly carried away by the wind. "The familiar chooses you, not the other way around. And it's usually a clan thing."

"Oh," said Naruto. Then, "Is San part of a clan thing?"

"She said she's Inuzuka," Neji felt compelled to point out.

"Is that a clan thing?"

Neji closed his eyes and took a calming breath that was promptly jarred out of him by the wolf Chie's rough stride.

"They're only one of the biggest clans in Konoha," said Sasuke, presumably rolling his eyes. "Known for their ninken and red-fang facial markings."

"Neat," Naruto breathed onto Neji's neck.

Neji narrowed his eyes against the rush of wind as the trees whipped past and chanced a look sideways at the wolf Yuuki. Hinata-sama, predictably, looked terrified, clinging to Temari's waist, while a flush of excitement lit Sakura's face with a pink glow. Temari...Temari's face was the most open Neji had ever seen it, eyes wide despite the sting of the wind, an elated smile tugging at the edges of her mouth. He glanced away before she looked over.

San's camp was hidden in the far corner of a hollow between cliffs, reachable by a system of caves in the craggy mountainside.

"Make yourselves at home," invited San, once the Neji had slid rather gracelessly from the wolf Chie's back. "Chie can show you where the river is, if you need more water."

"San," called Hatake from the lip of the hollow, and jerked his head back toward the caves. The masked shinobi and his team had shadowed the wolves through the forest until the thick undergrowth gave way to tall, scraggly trees, just out of sight.

"Are you leaving us here?" Temari asked, slipping lightly from the wolf Yuuki's back.

"Just while we secure the perimeter," said Hatake. "If you run into trouble, Bull will keep you safe."

Neji turned to give the ninken, sprawled genially in the center of the clearing, a dubious once-over. When he turned back, Hatake and San had vanished.

"Great," Temari muttered, reaching up to help Hinata down. She sighed and surveyed the clearing, planting her hands on her hips absently. "All right. Neji, find a vantage point and keep lookout. Gaara, dig a fire pit. Naruto and Sai, get water. Sasuke and Hinata, firewood. Sakura, help me with the food."

The children scattered.

Neji glanced around the clearing and beelined for the hollow's walls. Concentrating his chakra, he took two steps straight up the rocky wall, then two more before his foot slipped. Instinctively, he slapped his open hand against the wall and hauled himself the rest of the way to a shallow ledge with a combination of strength and chakra.

Once perched atop the ledge, he flipped through the signs and activated his byakugan, letting the world unfold to his gaze. In the tunnels, the shinobi had convened in a small huddle, the youngest one standing back a couple paces. Neji focused in on the group curiously and watched their mouths move silently, but couldn't make out any words.

Disappointed, he examined their chakra, but that was tamped down too tightly - even that of the two ninken, each about the height of Neji's waist, that lounged against the cave walls. He let the chakra-color fade and instead switched to heat-sight. Little pinpricks of heat - birds and mice and other wildlife - bloomed in his field of vision.

The wolves Yuuki and Chie, lounging comfortably on either side of the hollow, were the biggest and warmest, then the ninken Bull meandering after Sasuke and Hinata-sama.

Including the wolves, that was five ninken. One more was tailing Sai and Naruto to the river. Neji cast his sight further and made out at least three others of varying size, scattered around in the tunnels and beyond, in the forest. How many ninken did this shinobi have ? He'd never seen an Inuzuka with more than two or three dogs. He filed the information away for later consideration.

It was full dark and the dried salt-jerky soup Temari made with sheets of dried vegetables and also two small fish Sai had pulled out of the river with the water was long gone, and the battered aluminum pot it had been in scoured clean by the time any of the shinobi made a reappearance.

"Heads up," murmured Sakura, squinting past the fire.

Neji turned. Shisui had the large sack from their foray into town slung over one shoulder, while at his side, Itachi held a small flame in the palm of his hand to light their way.

"You've been busy," Shisui greeted, padding up behind Naruto and letting the sack slide to the ground. "Find everything okay?"

"Yes," said Temari, both an acknowledgement and a question.

"Well," said Shisui. He glanced sideways at Itachi and carefully sat on a flat rock. After a brief pause, Itachi closed his hand to extinguish the light and followed suit. "I'm told we pulled you out of Iwa pretty quickly, and now that we have time, the captain thought it would be a good idea for us to answer some of the questions that you might have."

"Who are you?" Temari pounced on the opportunity instantly.

Shisui nodded, eyeing her thoughtfully. "As I mentioned earlier, my name is Uchiha Shisui. I'm a former jounin of Konoha, and currently a member of this team, which is part of a larger group that calls itself - " he paused here almost imperceptibly, " - Hanabi-ha: the Hanabi Faction."

"You call it what?" Neji demanded, drowned out by Naruto's much louder, "The what?" as Hinata-sama sucked in a breath.

"Why?" asked Temari, an edge to her voice.

"In the early days following the Sandaime's assassination, the prospective heirs to the Uchiha and Hyuuga clans went missing, along with the Kyuubi jinchuuriki," Itachi took over smoothly. Neji transferred a narrowed-eye glare to him. "There were suspicions of power-grabbing and blackmail, among others, and many shinobi took exception to attempts to obfuscate the circumstances surrounding the assassination and subsequent events. 'Hana' and 'bi' as constituents represent our continued dedication to Konoha and Hi no Kuni. In itself, it serves as an accusation of the failings of Konoha's current leadership, and a reminder of what is most important."

"And that is?" asked Sakura suspiciously.

"You," Itachi said simply.

"Konoha's children are its future," added Shisui. "They're to be protected, because one day they'll be protecting Konoha. 'Hanabi' was intended to serve as a reminder of that betrayal. Though," he added as an afterthought, "we're mostly just called Hana-ha these days."

"What are your plans for us?" asked Sai, as Temari somewhat incredulously mouthed 'children' and 'to be protected' silently.

Here, Shisui's expression twisted into a shadow of a frown before smoothing out again. "You should be safe in Tetsu for the most part, as long as you stay in San's forest. I'm told your previous sensei taught you some basic techniques for fighting and survival. We'll give you more extensive training."

"Do you want us to fight for you?" Temari asked bluntly.

Shisui and Itachi exchanged a long glance with a silent argument. Itachi narrowed his eyes.

"Yes," answered Shisui finally. "But we won't force you to. Nobody in Hana-ha fights against their will."

"We will train you, regardless," said Itachi. "Enough to defend yourselves at the very least."

"Cool," said Naruto brightly, because obviously all he'd heard of that was 'we will train you.' "When do we start?"

"We will begin with one-to-one matches to gauge your current skill levels," Itachi announced placidly.

Neji squinted his eyes against the rising sun and tried not to scowl too much. The night had been restless, even with the ridiculously heavy cloaks Shisui had distributed out in lieu of sleeping bags, and his hair felt gritty from the dust that had accumulated in it.

The sleepless week had been hard on them all. Hinata-sama swayed gently on her feet even as she kept her eyes determinedly on Itachi. Even Naruto's eyes were slits, his face puffy and pale.

The only one unaffected was Gaara, who never slept anyways. His arms were crossed, however, and his usual glower was pasted firmly on his face.

They were in a different gorge this morning, adjacent to San's base camp. All the shinobi had turned up for this - San and her wolves perched high up on the walls of the ravine, Hatake leaning against a boulder with his arms crossed next to Shisui, and Momoichi and his silent shadow behind Neji's clump of companions - and Neji was feeling increasingly discomfited at the scrutiny.

"We will attempt to match you by your current skill set," Itachi continued. "Temari-san will fight Sai-san. Naruto-san and Sasuke. Neji-san and Hinata-san. Gaara-san - " he hesitated, surveying the ragged group.

The blood had drained from Sakura's face, and Neji rather agreed with that assessment. Itachi couldn't possibly put a blooded killer against a one-year Academy student and expect it to be a fair fight.

"And Haku," growled Momochi from behind.

What? Neji turned to stare incredulously and wondered if the nukenin knew what Gaara was. Surely not, if he was willing to put his protégé up against him. Beside the Swordsman, the one called Haku straightened, lifting his chin a little.

Itachi frowned faintly, but despite the shocked silence from Neji's group, none of the other shinobi perched around the gorge raised an objection. He nodded in acquiescence. "Gaara-san will fight Haku-san. Sakura-san, you may fight either Naruto-san or Hinata-san as well."

The sand hissed and shifted at their feet. Gaara turned to pin Haku with an unnerving stare. "Come," he commanded.

Neji stepped back, shoving Hinata-sama clear. She stumbled, but that was better than getting in between Gaara and his target.

Itachi did not seem to share that sentiment, even as the others backed away. Sakura scurried towards Neji while the rest splashed through the shallow river that bisected the gorge to the far wall.

Temari lingered for a moment. "Gaara," she said forcefully. The jinchuuriki's glower didn't falter. "Gaara ," she snapped, and reluctantly, he turned to her. "No killing," she warned.

"You may use whatever weapons or jutsu you please, but cause no permanent damage," Itachi agreed serenely, when Gaara jerked his head in a grudging nod. "Are you ready? Gaara-san? Haku-san?"

Gaara merely narrowed his eyes in response. Haku stepped forward about five meters from Gaara and gave Itachi a firm nod, tucking his hands into his sleeves almost in imitation of Gaara's crossed arms.

"Very well," said Itachi, taking several paces back. "The match will proceed until I call it, or until a participant yields. Begin!"

Almost immediately, Haku's hands came out of his sleeves with a fistful of senbon in each, sending a streak of silver in Gaara's direction.

The senbon bounced harmlessly ineffectually off a jagged column of sand that ripped up from the ground in a spray of dirt. A wave of sand crashed after Haku, but the other boy was gone, having begun moving before the senbon left his fingers. Gaara himself made no movement beyond the narrowing of his eyes.

"He's fast," Sakura murmured in surprise, as Haku launched another volley of senbon at Gaara's side.

That too was batted aside with little effort as the sand gave chase to Haku, who ducked its grasping tendrils and sprinted back towards the river as his hands flashed through a series of seals. Spines of sand burst from the ground at his feet, but he flitted away too quickly for them to strike.

"Hijutsu: Sensatsu Suishou!" Haku murmured, his voice carrying over the battlefield, and a ring of water rose up from the river to surround the jinchuuriki.

Gaara threw up clawed hands crossed before him, and an encircling wall of sand shot up just in time for the hail of water needles to slam into. When he lowered his hands, a dark scowl marred his face and deep pits were scored into his sand.

Neji's eyebrows rose, and his eyes darted back to Haku with renewed interest.

The boy's face was focused and unruffled, even as he leapt backwards from the mass of sand that slammed inelegantly into the ground in front of him. Another set of senbon coalesced from the river and hurtled at Gaara's back from above, forcing the jinchuuriki to split his attention to block.

Another burst of water senbon, another sand shield. Haku's attacks were impressively fast and strong, but not enough to break through Gaara's iron defenses. He seemed to come to the realization at the same time Neji did.

"Zabuza-san?" he called, darting out of the way of as heavy fist of sand came crashing down.

Neji glanced over - the Swordsman's arms were folded as he watched the match almost boredly. "Go ahead, kid," he said lazily, and Haku's eyes went flint-hard.

Neji flinched as the temperature dropped abruptly. Haku flung out a hand and sent a barrage of senbon that froze over midair and went hissing into Gaara's sand shield and came out the other side .

Sakura let out a muffled yelp. "Is that ice ?" she demanded in a hushed voice, as a second wall of sand shot up just in time to block the projectiles right in front of the jinchuuriki.

Neji activated the byakugan for a better look. Haku's chakra curled around him, an icy blue coursing through his body as the malevolent chakra swelled in Gaara's, oozing through his sand and seeping into the ground around him. "His chakra is the ice," he murmured in disbelief as Haku bounded backwards several paces.

"Hijutsu: Makyou Hyoushou," Haku breathed, and with a crackle four mirrors of ice materialized, three about a meter up and tilted towards the ground with Gaara at the epicenter of the triangle, and one horizontal above him, effectively caging him in.

Warily, Gaara pulled his sand in around him and it seethed at his feet as he considered the mirrors with narrowed eyes.

Haku took that moment to make a flying leap straight at the nearest mirror. Neji involuntarily sucked in a breath and forgot to breathe when rather than crashing into the unforgiving ice, the mirror absorbed the shinobi entirely. On each mirror, a reflection appeared, a set of ice senbon materializing in each hand like claws.

"H-how - " Hinata-sama stuttered, eyes wide.

"Let's begin," the Hakus all murmured, and hurled their senbon.

A dome of sand slammed into place over Gaara as he ducked, both arms over his head, but the hail of senbon flew hard and fast and the sand churned around him desperately when the projectiles breached his outer defenses. Tendrils of sand lashed out like tree branches in the wind, battering uselessly against the mirrors.

Neji suddenly realized that the high keening emitting from the dome was Gaara - and getting louder.

A wave of sand slammed itself against a mirror with a loud crack, but did not so much as scratch the ice. The flurry of senbon continued uninterrupted.

The miasma of Gaara's chakra surged unpleasantly, and the keening gave way to a blood-curdling screech as the sand dome crumbled away from him. Neji jerked back reflexively. Hinata-sama tripped backwards in her haste to get away. He glanced across the river and locked eyes with Temari, whose face had gone bone-white.

"Blood?!" Gaara howled, enraged and inhuman, as a trickle of blood dripped down his forehead. "Blood!"

The senbon stopped abruptly. This time, it was Haku who regarded his opponent warily.

"Yes," Gaara muttered to himself, even as the outer edge of his dome crumbled away. "His blood. I'll have his blood." Cracks spiderwebbed across his face and arms. Sand swarmed over his body, engulfing half his head with the snarling, fanged visage of a golden-eyed demon.

As a familiar wave of killing intent swept over Neji, he wondered why the Hana-ha shinobi hadn't stepped in.

They were definitely on the alert. Itachi's posture was still relaxed, but the Sharingan spun in both eyes. Shisui and Hatake each had one active as well, and Neji recoiled, momentarily revolted at the sight of the Uchiha genkai-kekkei in the socket normally covered by the Hatake's hitai-ate.

An ear-splitting crack drew Neji's attention back to the fight. Gaara's sand-demon-tail slammed against the ice as sand crawled down his arm in a bulbous parody of armor, shot through with black-tipped spikes and claws.

Haku's face froze in a rictus of determination and dismay as he resumed his attack, but now the ice seemed only to annoy the jinchuuriki, sticking in the sand armor.

The clawed growth that had sprouted from Gaara's arm lashed upwards with a resounding crash, and the mirror fractured. A second blow sent shards of ice exploding through the air.

Haku wasn't throwing just senbon anymore. An crescent-shaped ice blade deflected off Gaara's arm and came spinning at Neji, who fumbled a kunai out to block before Itachi blurred in front of them and batted it to the side. But the ice storm wasn't enough to stop Gaara, who seemed not to care about the cuts that sliced through the sand and through his skin other than to add to his fury.

With a snarl, Gaara lashed out in a circle, smashing through all three mirrors with claw and sand as if they were truly made of glass. Haku was sent flying backwards, tumbling out of a recently-decimated mirror, but turned his fall into a roll in time to leapt out of the way of the sand that crashed after him.

He gave up all semblance of finesse and threw blast after blast of raw ice at Gaara, who pounced after him like a rabid, extremely angry wolverine. The blasts deflected off Gaara's sand and left deep craters in the ground with muffled thuds, showering the battlefield with sprays of ice fragments. One blast of ice caught Gaara in the head, driving him back a step. He shook his head as if shaking off water, snarled, and lashed out with his sand.

Haku lashed out with his ice and twice caught the tendrils before they could reach him, but the third scored a direct hit that threw him across the clearing.

The thing-that-was-Gaara screamed triumphantly and lunged, bringing his sand to bear -

And then Itachi was standing there in front of him, calm and implacable. "Enough," he commanded. "This match is over."

The Gaara-thing clearly was not about to let something trifling like a former Anbu keep him from his prey. He slashed a claw through the shinobi, who vanished in a flock of crows, and launched his sand at Haku once again.

Haku send out another desperate blast of ice bringing up a shield that was instantly smashed, and the sand hurled him backwards. The trunk of a tree broke his flight, and he collapsed bonelessly to the ground.

A giant blade impaled the ground in front of Haku before the sand could reach him again. "It's over," growled Momochi, materializing next to his sword, and with a blur of hand seals, the entire contents of the river rose up to form a watery shield in front of the nukenin.

"Stop," Itachi ordered, planting himself between the shield and the jinchuuriki, the tomoe spinning wildly in his eyes. "You will calm down."

Gaara clutched at his head with mismatched hands, jerking from side to side as he snarled and muttered wordlessly. The sand floated about him ominously, forming claws and dissipating just as quickly.

"Gaara," Temari called from the other side of the riverbed, her voice uncharacteristically shrill and tremulous. "Gaara, you need to control it."

For a long, frozen moment, Neji forgot to breathe as the jinchuuriki wrestled with his demon. Abruptly, the sand dropped from the air and from his body, collapsing to the ground with a muted hiss. The golden demon-eye winked once and melted away.

Gaara, now just a too-pale, too-thin boy, with exhausted eyes, swayed on his feet in the middle of the carnage left by the battle. The ground was pitted where his sand had driven into the ground, or where Haku's ice blasts had missed their target. Fragments of rock and puddles from melting ice were scattered across the clearing. Several trees were no longer upright, and others sported gaping holes.

At the far end of the clearing Momochi let the water collapse back into the river. "Not good enough, kid," he muttered, eyeing the battered Haku as he struggled to breath.

Neji huffed out an incredulous half-laugh. Not good enough. The clash of raw power, of two monsters, two titans that easily could have smashed any one of their group into a bloody pulp, was not good enough.

He glanced across the river, to where Temari was just reaching Gaara, and caught the same combination of awe, envy, and resolve alongside the concern in her eyes.

This is what they wanted to be: monsters on the battlefield.

This is how strong they would become.

This he knew in his bones.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Zabuza Just Wants To Kill Someone, Preferably Multiple Someones

Nobody asked Zabuza if he wanted to be surrounded by tiny morons.

* * *

MISSION REPORT: D-16

AT1, AT3, ACHN: returned to baseline status.

ANHS: continued light fatigue.

ACNS: reduced damage to left chest, left upper arm. Injuries bandaged.

AT2, AT4: no change; Baseline status.

Provisions acquired: bread, salted pork, drinking water.

Medical supplies acquired: clean linen bandages.

AT2 supplies acquired: cloth diapers, powdered milk formula, dried fruit.

Location evaluated: security determined to be inadequate due to frequent shinobi traffic.

Course set for [REDACTED]. Estimated time of departure 1400 HOURS. Estimated time of travel 52 hours.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

* * *

"What an ungrateful brat," grumbled Zabuza, looming over his wheezing apprentice. "All those hours of training, and what do you do? Fall on your back when you meet your first jinchuuriki."

Haku blinked up at him. "Yes," he agreed with a beatific smile.

"Unbelievable. I don't need your insolence," Zabuza warned, yanking Kubikiribocho from the ground and slinging it back over his shoulder. "And quit laying around. You're holding everyone up."

That wasn't really true. Besides the half-feral wolf-girl, the Konoha nin were paying much more attention to the jinchuuriki than to Haku.

"Hey, Haku," said Zabuza speculatively as his apprentice staggered upright. "How would you feel about becoming a jinchuuriki?" Because that kind of power, with Haku's talents? Unstoppable.

"It looks uncomfortable, Zabuza-san," Haku said politely, the little shit.

He would do it though, if Zabuza asked. He turned the idea over in his mind and discarded it a little reluctantly. Haku was a rare enough creature as it was, and the Tailed Beasts a risky investment if he ever heard one.

The Suna girl fussed over her jinchuuriki, shepherding him to the far side of the makeshift arena. She would probably mother him for the next ten min - oh. Nope. She was coming back.

Itachi cast a brief glance at her and nodded once. "Nanashi Sai," he called, and the group of kids on the far end of the clearing rustled expectantly.

Zabuza leaned back against the trunk of a tree and folded his arms. This match was probably not going to be anywhere near as interesting as the first, but hey, he didn't have anything better to do.

At the center of the clearing, the girl drew a kunai from somewhere under her shirt, and the fucking creepy kid with the completely white skin took his place opposite. The boy had a tanto - standard issue, wrapped off-white hilt, a little scuffed - which he raised in front of him in a one-handed grip. Zabuza scrutinized him with narrowed eyes. His form was decent enough: functional, but nothing fancy. The girl was poised on her toes, ready to pounce. She would make the first move.

"Begin," said Itachi.

The girl lunged immediately, bringing up her kunai to parry the boy's defensive slash, and used the momentum to throw herself into a spinning kick at his unprotected side. He ducked, evading the blow, and launched a kick at the girl's legs when she landed.

The Suna girl went down, rolling backwards over her shoulder as the boy slashed downwards, and regained her feet in time to catch a second strike on her own blade. Her other hand whipped out another kunai and sent it spinning at the boy, forcing him to disengage and jump out of the way. The girl hurled the first kunai as well, leaping backwards as her hands flashed through a set of seals.

"Fuuton: Reppushou!" she growled, and clapped her hands together sharply.

A block of wood was blasted backwards by the girl's fuuton, substituted at the last minute as the boy vanished.

Alone on the battlefield, the girl narrowed her eyes and drew another kunai.

A massive shape erupted from a copse of trees. In a blur of movement a white-and-black lion-beast straight out of legends sprang at the Suna girl.

"Oh, shit," muttered Zabuza, reluctantly impressed despite himself.

After evading its claws on the first lunge, the girl sent a kunai into its side and scattered it into splatters of inky water. Maybe actual ink. Zabuza frowned in consternation.

"Not much of a shelf life on those," he muttered, to Haku, who hummed thoughtfully.

The lion-beast had bought time for an entire pack of smaller wolf-things to stream from the trees, and the Suna girl leapt backwards to keep them from encircling her.

If Zabuza squinted a little, they looked an awful lot like an unholy combination of Hatake's biggest ninken and the wolf-girl's wolves.

"Fuuton: Daitoppa!" the Suna girl spat, and the three wolf-things in front of her were blasted away.

The two still flanking her pounced at the same time. The girl dodged backwards, drawing a kunai in both hands, and hurled one at each.

The wolf-thing on the right vanished in a smattering of ink, the left in a puff of smoke, and the boy twisted out of the remains of his henge as the kunai streaked past his head. He brought his tanto to bear, and with a clash it met the girl's kunai. The Suna girl batted away a succession of blows, and again was forced to leap backwards.

"You are at a disadvantage, Temari," the boy pointed out helpfully. "My tanto has a longer reach." Which he demonstrated, and the girl dodged to the side, deflecting the blade away from her neck.

"Shut up, Sai," the girl retorted, blowing scraggly tendrils of hair out of her face. She produced yet another kunai from somewhere on her body, spinning it into a reverse grip, and pounced at him with a cheerfully bloodthirsty grin.

"Berserker?" he suggested absently to Haku as the girl enthusiastically attempted to separate her friend's arm from his shoulder.

"Too cautious," his apprentice disagreed.

"Eh," Zabuza said dismissively. "Maybe when she's older."

"That boy, Sai-kun…" Haku trailed off hesitantly, as the boy in question blocked one kunai and twisted out of the way of the other.

Zabuza grunted. "Creepy, right? Wonder what Konoha feeds its kids to make something like that. Is there any pigment in his skin?"

"I was going to say 'seems skilled despite his lack of training,' Zabuza-san," corrected Haku delicately.

"Nothing special," Zabuza said absently, watching critically as the boy swept his blade up to knock a kunai out of the girl's grip and send it spinning across the clearing. "His ink animals are one-hit wonders that he needs time and distance to pull off. Hey, maybe he leeches all the pigment out of his skin for his jutsu."

"Sure, Zabuza-san."

What a brat.

"Someone needs to get that girl something to bludgeon things with," Zabuza muttered, as the Suna girl smashed her bare fist into the boy's face, sending him stumbling backwards. "An axe. A mace. Whatever. She'd love it."

"She has a natural affinity for wind. It would be a shame to waste it," Haku mused.

"She's not even using it," Zabuza pointed out. "But I guess as long as she doesn't use ninjutsu, that creepy kid can't use his ink jutsu."

The Suna girl slammed the boy in the chest with a brutal kick that sent him skidding out on top of the river in a spray of water. He landed in a three point crouch, tanto held poised to strike. He leapt back again as the girl chased after him, bounding easily across the top of the water.

Instead of darting into the tree cover, the boy whipped around, sweeping his tanto at knee height. The girl leapt up, out of the way, but as soon as her feet left the ground, a pair of inky wolf-things burst from the trees, lunging at her from either side.

Haku made a small noise of surprise as the Suna girl twisted midair, a kunai in each hand flying true. She caught the boy's wrist as she landed, keeping the tanto inches from her torso. She yanked, sending him stumbling forward, and threw her weight on him. He went down face-first, the girl's arm at the back of his neck.

"Match," Itachi announced, and the girl stepped away.

"That would have worked," the Suna girl said. "I was out of kunai."

"I know," the boy replied ruefully, taking her hand and allowing her to haul him upright.

"Alright, keeping those wolf-things in reserve was pretty clever for a kid," Zabuza admitted. Because he was big enough to do that. As a ten-year-old, his idea of tactics had pretty much been 'kill them all.'

"Mm," said Haku agreeably.

Zabuza slanted a glance at his apprentice. His face was the kind of blank mask he affected when he thought something was funny but was too polite to laugh.

Zabuza scowled. "Haku," he growled.

Haku glanced up innocently. "Yes, Zabuza-san?"

"You're going to volunteer for middle watch. Every day. For a week."

"Hai," said Haku serenely.

"And we're doing endurance training," he added pettily.

"Yes, Zabuza-san."

Zabuza sniffed.

The two Hyuuga sized each other up in the clearing, poised in identical starting stances. The boy's shoulders were tense and slightly hunched. The girl's face was set in a fierce scowl as the veins spiderwebbed angrily across her eyes, the first time Zabuza had seen her look anything short of terrified. It was a good look on her; he approved.

"Begin," said Itachi.

The girl didn't hesitate, darting forward sure-footedly in time with her clansman, and met every blow with her own open-handed strikes.

It should have looked like an exceptionally bitchy slapfest, except that Zabuza could literally see the chakra that sparked and swirled around them with every clash.

The boy was violent grace and sharp movements as he knocked the girl's wrist away from his shoulder and struck out at her head.

She ducked aside neatly, and slammed a hand into his chest, knocking him back a couple steps. First contact.

The boy's grimace morphed into a silent snarl as he reset his stance. "Your luck will not carry you, Hinata-sama," he warned.

The girl's face faltered for an instant before her frown of concentration returned. She made the first move this time, a quick jab that was slapped aside almost derisively, and a second that the boy leaned around at the last second. She spun to the side to avoid his retaliatory strike and deflected his wrist from her abdomen, raw chakra blooming from where their hands impacted.

The pair clashed, drew back, and dove in, again and again, sending up bursts of chakra that dissipated as soon as they formed. The boy had a little more height and weight, a little more force behind his movements, but they seemed pretty evenly matched. He lunged in, sensing an opening in the girl's defenses, but the girl's hand came up at the last moment, and each landed a solid blow on the other's chest just below the collarbone.

Zabuza heard the audible huff as the air was knocked out of their lungs, and they both stumbled backwards.

The girl regarded the boy with a wary stare even as she wheezed for breath, though he seemed inclined to just glare in response, his own chest heaving.

"Those eyes are wasted on you if you cannot see what they show you," the boy said coldly, as the girl swayed slightly on her feet.

The girl glanced down at her arms, still raised, and her eyes widened. Her head snapped back up to meet the boy's hard stare, tendrils of dread and uncertainty creeping across her face.

Zabuza squinted dubiously. Some kind of genjutsu, maybe?

"He's blocked her tenketsu," murmured Haku, sounding impressed.

Oh, right, Hyuuga. They could do that, apparently.

The girl faltered, her composure broken. She trembled with effort to keep her stance - her left arm dipped conspicuously.

The boy didn't take the opening. His expression was a mask of thinly veiled contempt. "Keep your guard up," he snapped, and the girl jerked her hand back up.

The boy struck again, but this time the girl visibly struggled to turn aside his attack, an edge of desperation to her movements.

"You - " the boy struck, "are fighting - a losing - battle," he gritted out, "if you don't - protect - your tenketsu!"

The girl gave ground rapidly, batting away his attacks until a hard blow to the shoulder sent her skidding to the ground. She coughed, staring up at the boy with one arm raised defensively. Despite the byakugan, the fear shone through her eyes.

"Get up," the boy ordered harshly.

"Hey, knock it off, you jerk!" the blond jinchuuriki yelled from across the clearing.

Zabuza kind of agreed. The match had taken on a distinctly nasty tone, and a kid with pre-genin skills had no damn business being arrogant. Even if the girl was going to get herself killed the first time she ran into an actual shinobi.

"You cannot fight her battles," the boy snapped, glaring at the girl. "She should not need you to fight her battles for her."

The girl scrabbled in the dirt as she struggled to her feet. Her eyes were wild as they fixed on her clansman.

The boy, in contrast, stood unmoved, eyes cold. The second she regained her feet, he lashed out again, sending her back to the ground.

She staggered upright, narrowly ducking two strikes before the third shoved her backwards. "N-nii-san," she gasped.

"This is the power of the Main house?" the boy snarled in reply. "This is what would command me?" He prowled forward grimly as the girl backpedaled.

Ah, this was some clan shit. Thank the gods he never had to deal with that. Perks of being a breeding program baby.

"Stand your ground!" the boy demanded, but the girl skittered backwards again.

He stopped abruptly, face twisted in an ugly scowl. The girl regarded him warily, panting, arms trembling. "You," he said almost serenely, "are unworthy of the name Hyuuga."

Zabuza stiffened at the spike of actual killing intent from the kid. "Haku," he growled.

His apprentice brought his hands up just as the Hyuuga boy lunged, and ice burst up from the ground, tangling around boy's legs. Shisui appeared behind the boy in a flash, grabbing him in a loose headlock as Itachi blurred forward between the two Hyuuga, one arm outstretched to keep him at bay. Even Hatake stepped out of a shunshin, catching the boy's arm in an iron grasp.

"You're done," Hatake said tonelessly, superseding Itachi. "Stand down."

The burning fury in the boy's eyes intensified, but his face smoothed into a blank mask. Hatake let him go first, then Shisui stepped back. Haku's ice melted away with a wave of his hand.

On either side of the clearing, the children all stood frozen, only their eyes darting between the boy, the girl, and the shinobi.

A muscle in the boy's jaw twitched, but he jerked forward in an aborted bow. "I apologize," he ground out. "I was out of line."

"N-nii-san," the girl whispered, but the boy turned on his heel and stalked off.

"They're all hopeless," Zabuza growled, leaning comfortably on the hilt of Kubikiribocho. "The Suna jinchuuriki's a loose cannon, his sister has no sense of strategy, that ink boy is fucking creepy, the Hyuuga boy has some sort of fucked-up family grudge he can't keep off the battlefield, the Hyuuga girl is weaker than a wilted flower, Uchiha's brother has less than a tenth of his talent, the Konoha jinchuuriki can't do anything but get back up after getting hit, and the girl with the ridiculous hair can't fight for shit. If this is the future of Konoha, they're delusional."

"I don't think that the fact that you find Sai-kun creepy means he isn't skilled," Haku said delicately. "I thought they fought rather well, considering they haven't had consistent training."

"I don't keep you around to think, Haku," Zabuza snipped.

"One of us has to, Zabuza-san."

The impudence. Zabuza rolled his eyes. "All right, genius, what do you think then?"

"Gaara-kun has great power, even if his control is a little rough. Sai-kun has a keen mind for tactics and a good foundation with both his ink jutsu and kenjutsu. Temari-san is strong and has fast reflexes, and perhaps an affinity for wind-natured jutsu. Neji-kun," he hesitated briefly, "is already quite skilled in his family's techniques, and Hinata-chan showed great perseverance. Sasuke-kun already mastered several katon and basic taijutsu and shows potential to develop both further. Naruto-kun has a lot of stamina and a lot of chakra to spare, and Sakura-chan has great chakra control, given that she was able to stay on top of the water for a substantial part of her match."

"You're too nice, Haku," Zabuza dismissed. "Washouts, all of them. No sense of discipline."

He could feel Haku silently, politely disagreeing beside him.

For a moment, they watched the wannabe shinobi kids patching up their grievances with food, like good wannabe shinobi kids.

"Momochi, mission," Hatake said curtly, stalking past and flicking a scroll in his direction. Zabuza caught it instinctively and glared at the man's retreating back. He flicked the scroll open, then shut it just as quickly.

The Hana-ha shinobi, minus the wolf-girl who had long since vanished into the forest to do whatever wolf-girls did, clustered in one huddle by the smoldering fire. Zabuza scowled at that, because, again, they didn't invite him to their little strategy powwow.

"Go make something to eat," he ordered Haku abruptly, yanking his sword up from where he'd stuck it in the ground.

Zabuza really couldn't care less about the whole Hana-ha affair - don't get him wrong, he appreciated the whole coup thing - but by the gods he was chafing at both the authority and lack of authority. They didn't trust him to do anything important so they sent him around with a chaperone or on independent information-gathering trips where he didn't have to get ordered around but also didn't get to kill, maim, or even lightly injure anyone.

He really didn't like - read: fucking hated - people telling him what to do. But if Zabuza ever wanted to do something useful and preferably bloody, he was going to have to knuckle under and suck it the fuck up. He'd waited for a year; he was done biding his time. He slung his sword back over his back and stalked over to where the three had convened by the fire.

Hatake stopped talking as he approached, but that was fine. Shisui regarded him with open curiosity and the Uchiha kid looked like a fucking stone as usual, but Zabuza ignored them.

"You know what?" he snapped. "I'm tired of you treating me like some grunt career chuunin from the general corps. I was an Anbu captain and a Swordsman and you're wasting my skills on these godsdamned courier missions. Don't you fucking cut me out of the loop."

Hatake looked like he would interrupt, but Zabuza steamrolled right over him. "If this is about my loyalty," he spat, "you already have it. Don't make me say this again, sir. A life was saved, so a life is owed. I'm with you to the death. If you want me to wear your fucking colors, I'll wear your fucking colors."

Rant over, he crossed his arms and scowled at Hatake, who stared back at him blankly.

In his periphery, Shisui's eyes were wide, brows raised.

"I'll keep that in mind," Hatake said at last, after an uncomfortably long pause. "We're done here." He gave them all a nod, with one last look at Zabuza, before striding off.

Silently, with a glance between the two, Itachi slipped off as well.

Zabuza growled under his breath and slouched, scruffing a hand through his hair.

"So…" Shisui dragged the word out. Zabuza side-eyed him suspiciously. "...would you really have worn his henohenomoheji?"

Zabuza stared at him incredulously. "His what?"

"Like, a bandana with a cute little scarecrow face - "

"What the fuck," Zabuza snapped, scowling. "I'm not his fucking dog."

Shisui pasted an innocent expression on his face. "You just said you'd wear his colors."

Zabuza recoiled. "I meant that idiotic little swirl you call a leaf," he snapped.

"Oh," said Shisui unconvincingly. Zabuza glared. "Did you know," the Uchiha continued blithely, "that in Tetsu, when they go to battle, samurai often wear a token from their beloved - "

Zabuza whipped out a handful of kunai. "You, I don't owe shit, Konoha," he growled, and pounced.

All in all, Zabuza reflected, after scraping together the tattered remnants of his masculinity via a rousing half hour of attempting to impale Shisui, a successful venture. He was about eighty percent sure that Hatake got the message now, so at least he could lay off the 'boss' thing.

Gods, weren't shinobi supposed to be good at all that subtlety shit? Not that it had been very subtle. Maybe that was the problem. Too fucking unsubtle for Hatake to comprehend.

"Zabuza-san," Haku greeted, standing up to pass him a bowl of stew.

Zabuza sniffed it cautiously. "Is this squirrel?" he demanded, crouching down next to the fire.

"Yes," Haku said serenely, but his eyes were apologetic. "Uhei and Guruko brought them back. I know you find them, ah, distasteful - "

"I hate squirrel," Zabuza grumbled. "So fucking stringy."

"Oh, just eat it, you big baby," drawled Shisui, perched carelessly atop a pile of boulders with his own bowl of stew.

He glared, hand twitching instinctively for Kubikiribocho. Shisui just raised an eyebrow and his free hand inoffensively.

Gods, he hated squirrel. And squirrely little Konoha shinobi who wouldn't stand still and let him hit them. He stabbed halfheartedly at a chunk of meat. "Where's the walking statue?" he growled.

Shisui's other eyebrow went up, half-hidden behind his hitai-ate. "Talking to Sasuke, trying to catch up," he answered, motioning vaguely towards the second fire, with its small pile of children. "Except, you know, he's not too used to the Sasuke that's been a fugitive in the minor lands the past two years." He paused. "Or, well, the other way around too."

Zabuza shrugged dismissively. "Eh, builds character. They have something to bond over."

Shisui cut an incredulous glance at Haku, who blinked tolerantly. "Z, you ever think that your idea of 'bonding' is a little...strenuous?"

"I don't bond," Zabuza sniffed. "I exterminate."

What the fuck, he saw the Uchiha mouth, and bit down a smirk.

"How long are you hanging around this time?" Shisui asked instead, clearly choosing to disregard the enlightening philosophy Zabuza had deigned to share.

"Heading out tomorrow morning to check the dead drop in Hi no Kuni," Zabuza grunted.

"No, you're not," corrected Hatake, ghosting up behind them. "Change of plans. I'm going to the dead drop. The rest of you will guard the children. Haku, send Itachi here and watch them."

"Hai," said Haku, turning away after a brief look at Zabuza.

Zabuza exchanged a glance with Shisui, fingers itching for Kubikiribocho. He had a bad feeling about this.

Itachi slipped out of the shadows by Shisui's side, a pensive set to his face that smoothed into emotionlessness in the blink of an eye.

"I'll make this brief," said Hatake. "For the foreseeable future, the children will be divided into groups based on their strengths or needs, and each of you will be in charge of teaching a group. Itachi," he directed. "You are assigned to Gaara, Hinata, and Sai. Focus on training them in stealth. Concealment."

"Hai," replied Itachi, a slight frown marring his face.

"Zabuza, you will have Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura, a strength-based team. Shisui, you will teach Temari, Neji, and Haku - "

Back the fuck up. "Hold on," Zabuza snapped. "That's my apprentice."

"I would like to be the one to train my brother," Itachi interjected. "Perhaps we could - "

Hatake held his hand up, and Itachi's mouth clicked shut like a damned puppet. Zabuza snorted derisively.

Hatake's eye snapped to Zabuza, who sneered back and tried very hard to think about playing a good little soldier for the sake of a nice, bloody massacre down the line.

"You don't think Haku has anything to learn from Shunshin no Shisui?" Hatake challenged coolly.

From the corner of his eye, Shisui's gaze darted towards him and away. Fuck. Zabuza clenched his jaw and didn't respond.

"You just reunited with Sasuke for the first time in two years," Hatake fired at Itachi next. "Now is not the time to treat him as a subordinate."

Itachi hesitated, but dipped his head in acquiescence.

Wow, look at that. Their own little rebellion quashed in a record fifteen seconds. Zabuza scowled and crossed his arms.

The most annoying part about the whole thing was that Hatake was right, at least about the teaching assignments - Haku did have a lot to learn, and speed-based attacks were Shisui's forte, not his. Zabuza's own fighting style leaned heavily towards physical strength and ninjutsu, which at least the Konoha jinchuuriki and the Uchiha kid matched, and Itachi's stint in Anbu had given him extensive training in stealth and espionage.

The pink-haired girl, though - good thing she was a spare. Zabuza didn't think any amount of training could get her through her first battle without getting her skewered.

"I think it goes without saying, but you are in charge of their safety, not just their training" said Hatake, pinning them each in turn with a hard stare. "This is a great responsibility. You can consider them candidates for genin at this point."

Responsibility. Genin, kami. There was a fucking reason Zabuza took an apprentice. Haku had basically sprung out of a river (dumpster) fully formed and ready to fight. But three half-trained brats who probably learned a shitload of bad habits? He didn't sign up for this.

He eyed Hatake resentfully, because no way that fucker didn't know what he'd just done. Zabuza'd gotten his damned wish, he was part of the club now, and thanks to that he got slapped with indefinite babysitting duy. And he couldn't even complain because Shisui and Itachi were in the same boat.

Fuck.

Really backed himself into a corner there.

Zabuza glared stonily.

Three sets of eyes peered back with varying degrees of venom.

"I am Momochi Zabuza. Former jounin, former Anbu, in your bingo books as the Demon of the Hidden Mist," he announced stonily.

"My name's Uzumaki Naruto, and I - "

Zabuza resisted the urge to rub away the burgeoning headache. Gods, why was this kid's voice so shrill? "That's great, I don't give a damn," he interrupted. "I'm here to keep you from killing yourselves, not to care about you."

The Uchiha kid glowered. The jinchuuriki looked incredibly offended for all of five seconds before visibly switching gears. "Are you going to teach us super cool jutsu?" he demanded.

Zabuza laughed, muffled beneath the bandages swathing his lower face. "You're miles away from doing 'cool jutsu,' brat. Learning new techniques is only useful if you can stay alive long enough to use them."

He pointed at the Uchiha brat, "You are weak. You - " he jabbed a finger at the jinchuuriki, "can't fight for shit." He turned his glare on the girl. "And you are useless. Uchiha Itachi was an Anbu captain at thirteen. Uchiha Shisui was a feared jounin by eleven, Hatake by ten. Hell, Shisui and Hatake were on the battlefield at age five." He sneered at the trio of children glaring back at him with a mixture of defiance and anger. "As far as I'm concerned, you three are so far behind, you may as well dig your own graves now."

"What were you doing when you were five?" the jinchuuriki piped up.

Zabuza grinned beneath the bandages, slow and derisive. "When I was five, I slaughtered a hundred and eight genin-hopefuls twice my age in the span of a couple hours." He surveyed their expressions with a grim satisfaction.

The jinchuuriki's eyes widened. The shadow of fear lurked in the Uchiha brat's. The blood drained from the girl's face, leaving her bone-white. "Why," the girl managed to whisper, "would you do that?"

Desperation. Anger. Resolve. Zabuza shrugged a shoulder carelessly and let the emotions of the past slide away. "To test the limits of my abilities," he said blandly.

"That's bullshit!" the jinchuuriki bust out. The girl shot him a scandalized glare, but he continued obliviously. "Nobody just murders a bunch of kids for some stupid reason like that!"

Zabuza hunkered down, because apparently step one was a history lesson. "Do you brats know why Kirigakure is known as the Bloody Mist?" They all shook their heads. Zabuza ticked the list off his fingers. "Genkai kekkei purges. Public executions. Lynching mobs. And the final Academy graduation test: killing another genin candidate." He chuckled mirthlessly at their horrified expressions. "You'll find a lot of senseless killing in Kiri."

The brats were watching him warily now. Good. A little fear was good for them. The rest of that particular lesson could wait for another day.

He bared his teeth in a mockery of a smile. "Now you know the standards I expect from you. I don't buy into that Konoha touchy-feely bullcrap. If you can't cut it, tough shit. That's on your head."

He surveyed their expressions. Anger? Check. Fear? Check. Defiance? Check. Excellent.

He jabbed a finger towards the trees, and the girl flinched. "Run," he ordered.

The trio glanced at each other hesitantly.

Zabuza rolled his eyes. "What, do you need better motivation?" He flipped through the signs almost casually, and the Uchiha brat tensed. He was slightly more intelligent than the other two, then - but not smart enough.

Beside him, a mizu bunshin rose from the ground in a crouch, leering at the brats maliciously. "My bunshin will keep you company. Try not to get skewered."

"For how long?" demanded the girl, giving the clone an alarmed glance.

Zabuza shrugged. "Until I tell you to stop." The clone twirled a kunai in one hand, then hurled it at their feet.

All three jumped backwards - the jinchuuriki tripped - with startled yelps. "Run," Zabuza repeated, and the three took off with a little encouragement from another water kunai.

Satisfied, Zabuza watched them disappear into the forest, his bunshin loping behind easily. That should keep them occupied for a good hour or two, or until he figured out what the fuck he was supposed to do with them. At least now he'd get some peace and quiet.

"How goes it?" said Shisui in his ear.

Zabuza barely managed to suppress a flinch. He turned his head to glare at the younger shinobi.

Shisui lounged back against a nearby tree. "Well?"

Zabuza shook his head. "They're insubordinate, undisciplined, and completely hopeless, not to mention soft. Yeah, they're not dead yet, but they're no shinobi."

Shisui snorted. "C'mon, Z. They haven't had much training, you can't expect them to already know how to fight. You can't tell me Haku did."

"Haku was five," snapped Zabuza, bristling, "and he had already spilled blood."

"That was an accident, he didn't actually know how to fight," Shisui pointed out dryly. "Besides, he had you to teach him afterwards. These kids'll learn too."

Zabuza grunted dismissively. "Where is Haku, anyways? Why aren't you with your brats?"

"Clone," said Shisui, pushing off languidly from the trunk of the tree. "They're just running some drills, nothing I really need to be there in person for. You?"

"Clone," Zabuza agreed.

"Anyways, I was thinking," Shisui continued. "Hunting's probably good training for the kids, so we could all switch off taking care of dinner. Taichou sent off most of the ninken last night, and we can't really ask San to feed all twelve of us."

Zabuza shrugged. "Sure, fine."

"Great," Shisui said brightly. "I'll go tell Itachi. You can do the first day. Later, Z!"

"Hold the fuck up," Zabuza snarled, whirling to grab for Shisui's collar. "Konoha!" But Shisui vanished in a swirl of leaves and a two-fingered salute.

"What the actual fuck." Zabuza glowered, glaring in the direction he'd gone.

Whatever. At least he wouldn't have to figure out how to train the brats until tomorrow. He slouched back and unslung Kubikiribocho from its harness. May as well give it a good polish while he had the time.

Gods, why couldn't he have waited until after they'd foisted off the brats onto someone else to make his fucking declaration of loyalty? At least when he was running messages, he only had Haku with him.

He did trust Shisui enough not to screw him over, though. Now that was a kid with a good head on his shoulders - a head that was worth somewhere in the realm of forty million ryou according to the Kiri bingo book. In the shinobi world, when it came to speed, it was Uchiha Shisui, even though he'd disappeared before ever reaching his prime. Zabuza would have to be a fool not to let Haku learn from him.

Zabuza examined his blade critically. It showed no signs of wear and tear, but instead shone smooth and sharp as the day it had been forged. Satisfied, he hefted it back over his shoulder and tucked the cleaning cloth back in his pocket.

He surveyed the empty forest, then sauntered off in the direction his clone had chased the brats. He was probably going to need the whole rest of the day to make them catch dinner - they were just so loud.

His scowl deepened as the undergrowth crackled ahead of him. Yeah, he was going to have to beat that out of them or something. How the fuck do you escape an enemy if they can hear where you're going?

Right on cue, the Uchiha whelp came crashing out of the bushes, face flushed with exertion.

"Stop," said Zabuza.

The brat yelped and promptly hurled a kunai at his face.

Zabuza snatched it out of the air and levered the little bastard with a thunderous glare.

"Sorry?" the boy offered grudgingly, as the jinchuuriki stumbled out of the undergrowth. The girl trailed him, tottering on quivering legs like a baby goat.

Zabuza tossed the kunai at the Uchiha's feet and let the mizu bunshin dissolve into a puddle. "I hope you're warmed up now," he said, crossing his arms over his chest. "We would probably start the actual training at this point - " the girl mouthed actual training incredulously " - but today you get to kill something for dinner, or all of you - and entire little gang of hellspawn - go hungry tonight."

The jinchuuriki opened his mouth. "What do we - "

"Step one," Zabuza interrupted. "Be quiet."

"But I - " By the gods, the kid didn't know when to quit.

Zabuza snapped his fingers at the blond. "That means shut up."

Thankfully, the kid shut his mouth, though he glared furiously at Zabuza.

"Step two," said Zabuza. "Pick something to eat."

"Rabbit," said the Uchiha, tucking away his kunai.

"Fish?" suggested the girl.

"Ramen!" crowed the jinchuuriki.

In Mizu no Kuni, there was a string of islands to the south of Kirigakure with clean, white sand, gentle waves rolicking at the shores, and a smattering of leafy palm trees. Zabuza wished he was there right at that instant so a coconut could fall from those gently waving fronds and brain him so that he wouldn't have to deal with this tiny moron.

"Idiot!" the girl elbowed the jinchuuriki sharply. "You can't hunt ramen!"

"Rabbit, great," said Zabuza insincerely, beginning to realize that selective hearing could, in fact, be the answer here. "Step three: find your prey." He stared at the brats expectantly. They stared back cluelessly.

Zabuza rolled his eyes and gestured vaguely at the trees. "Where are you going to find a rabbit?"

They all shuffled a bit. The girl darted nervous glances at the other brats and at Zabuza. "Somewhere with water?" she said hesitantly. "We could set up snares near a river, like Neko-sensei showed us."

Thank fuck this mysterious sensei at least kind of knew what she was doing, because Zabuza sure as hell didn't. "River: yes; snares: no." He crossed his arms across his chest. "We're hunting today, not trapping."

"It's easier to catch small animals with a trap," the Uchiha brat objected. "And you said we have to feed eight of us - "

"Yeah, see, I don't really care if you eat or not." Zabuza shrugged dismissively. "Kill the thing with your own power or starve."

"That's stupid!" the jinchuuriki protested. "You're stupid!"

"Naruto!" hissed the girl, giving the brat a good sock to the shoulder.

Do not maim the brat. Do not kill the brat. Do not chop the brat into tiny, squishy pieces. "When you kill me," Zabuza gritted out, "you can make your own rules. Now go find a damn rabbit."

The Uchiha brat once again proved he had at least one brain cell by turning decisively off into the trees, leaving his little friends no choice but to follow or be left alone with Zabuza. They chose the former.

"And step quietly!" he snapped. "Rabbits can not only hear you, they can feel you stomping towards them."

Did they even know where the river was? No, they didn't.

"Go west," Zabuza finally growled at them, after letting them blunder through the woods for a good half hour, "if you ever want to find running water."

"Why didn't you tell us earlier?" the jinchuuriki complained.

"Your incompetence is not my responsibility," Zabuza sneered, before realizing that it was, in fact, kind of his responsibility. Fucking Hatake. He gritted his teeth.

"All of you stop," he ordered, "And take a look around instead of running around like headless chickens." The brats glanced around warily. The jinchuuriki shuffled a little. "Water runs downhill," he said, very slowly. "More green leafy plants grow near water. Humidity is higher. Most importantly you can hear the water running, which is why rule number one is be quiet."

The jinchuuriki stopped moving. "I hear it!" he said, eyes wide. "Let's go!"

"Quietly," added the girl, with a flickering glance at Zabuza. Thank the gods.

The Uchiha brat took the lead, which was good because he was the quietest. Zabuza trailed them by a half a dozen meters. They were on the right track - he could pick out the hints of pawprints all around as they approached the stream.

The first time they passed a rabbit...absolutely nothing happened. The creature crouched frozen in the bushes as the brats stalked right past and kept on going. Zabuza glanced disbelievingly between the rabbit and the brats, but not one of the brats so much as blinked in its direction. And then they passed another. And another.

"You've got to be kidding me," he muttered under his breath. He doubled back on silent feet, where a rabbit nibbled obliviously on a leaf. He gave it a narrow-eyed stare, because he definitely didn't see what was so stealthy about it. Eh, if they weren't going to get it -

He snapped out a kunai and slashed the thing's throat before it had a chance to so much as twitch. Then he shrugged and went back for another. No reason why he shouldn't eat even if the brats went hungry.

The brats had finally caught sight of a particularly large rabbit crouched among the roots of one of a tree, its pelt patchy and mottled with only half of its winter coat grown in. Zabuza ghosted up next to them, and when they turned to look at him, raised an eyebrow and jerked his head towards the animal.

The jinchuuriki pulled out a kunai with an almost ostentatious flourish. The Uchiha nudged him with an elbow, and while the boys were distracted with their silent squabble, the girl pulled out a kunai, took careful aim, and threw.

It soared fast and sure, and impaled itself in the trunk of the tree ten centimeters from the rabbit's bobbed tail. The rabbit's head snapped up and in a flash of brown-and-white, darted away through the bushes.

In unison, the three children turned to look at Zabuza guiltily with wide eyes, the boys' squabbling forgotten.

Zabuza resisted the overwhelming urge to close his eyes and pinch the bridge of his nose. He settled for breathing in deeply. "Clearly we skipped a step," he growled. "Learn how to fucking aim."

The brats followed meekly as he led them back uphill, for once quiet and subdued. He stopped at the top of the ridge, and grimaced at the ragtag brats clustered behind him.

"Alright," he said, and slashed an X into the trunk of a tree. "Stand back there. Each of you get five tries. Jinchuuriki, you're first."

"Don't call me that!" the blond kid cried. "My name's Naruto!"

"Did I hurt your feelings?" Zabuza sneered. Although, he reflected, advertising that the kid was a jinchuuriki was probably not a great idea. "Just throw the damned kunai. Or do you not know how?"

The jinchuuriki glowered. "I'm really good at throwing kunai!" he retorted, and hurled a blade at the target. It sailed past the tree entirely and vanished into the undergrowth.

Zabuza raised a condescending eyebrow as the jinchuuriki's ears turned red.

"Stupid kunai," the jinchuuriki muttered, as the girl slapped a hand over her eyes. The Uchiha sighed through his nose.

He threw a second, and it stuck in the trunk of the tree. His third and fourth hit halfway along the X. The last missed, sinking into the trunk above the target.

Zabuza grunted. "Great," he said facetiously. "Mini Uchiha, you're next."

The boy pulled a handful of kunai out from under his shirt and hurled each of them, one after the other in rapid succession. All five clustered tightly at the intersection of the target.

"Hm," said Zabuza, with grudging approval. "Now you, girl."

The girl stepped forward and set her feet determinedly. She took a breath and spun a kunai absently in her hand. Her first blade went wide, but the next three thudded in just above and to the right of the Uchiha's. The last hit just above the target. She bit her lip, eyes darting to Zabuza apprehensively.

"All right," said Zabuza. "You, boy, you're coming with me. You two - stay here and keep practicing until you can hit the middle of the target five times out of five."

"What?" the jinchuuriki protested. "Why does Sasuke get to go with you?"

"Because he has at least a chance of hitting a rabbit if he sees one," Zabuza growled. "Or do you want your little pack of hellions to starve?"

The brat opened his mouth again, but the girl slapped her hand over his mouth. "No, we'll practice," she said quickly, and then snatched it back when the jinchuuriki brat licked her palm.

"Get to it," said Zabuza dismissively, already turning away, then paused. "Girl, you're letting go of your kunai too early. Uh, Kani - "

"It's Naruto!" the brat shrilled.

" - you're using the wrong muscles and your form isn't stable. Ask the girl to help you." He eyed them both then gave a mental shrug. "We'll be back in an hour, if you're better by then you can come for round two."

"How long are we hunting?" The Uchiha brat asked, eyeing Zabuza warily.

"Until you catch enough or until the sun goes down." Zabuza smirked as the jinchuuriki's stomach growled, as if on cue. "And don't try to sneak any food while we're gone," he added. "The consequences will be...unpleasant."

"What?" the jinchuuriki shrilled, but Zabuza ignored him, stalking off between the trees. Gods, he hated kids. Especially loud kids.

Okay, so the Uchiha brat wasn't so bad. He moved cautiously for the most part, and more importantly, he was quieter than the other two.

He was just about as observant as the other brats, though.

Zabuza slapped the back of his head - lightly - and pointed at the bundle of fur nibbling on grass at the edge of a clearing when the Uchiha turned to glare.

The boy's shoulders hitched up towards his ears a little when he spotted the rabbit, but he slid a hand under his shirt and produced a kunai. One heartbeat, two - and he sent the blade spinning towards the animal and caught it in the flank as tried to flee. The boy sprang out of hiding, and with a second kunai, tore its neck almost clean in two.

Zabuza grunted, unimpressed, as the boy picked up the rabbit by its ears. "Aim for the head next time."

Unfortunately, quiet didn't mean mute, and the brat's Uchiha blood didn't give him his brother's near-silent demeanor.

Ahead of him, prowling with careful steps over a fallen tree, he asked, "Why are you working with my brother? Why did you leave Kirigakure?"

His knee-jerk response was none of your damned business, closely followed by fuck off. But Itachi's newly rediscovered protective brother instincts would activate, and he'd probably stick Zabuza in a genjutsu that was physically harmless but honestly pretty traumatic while he himself would be forced to retaliate with severely debilitating injuries, Zabuza, put the sword down.

But I owe a life debt was a little too personal and for shits and giggles too flippant. If he gave the kid some kind of explanation maybe he'd convince the other two to actually follow orders.

Ha. Right.

"I tried to assassinate the Mizukage," he decided to say, and belatedly realized just how he might have fucked that up.

The boy froze. Narrowed eyes darted at Zabuza, suddenly wary.

Zabuza grimaced. "He's a piece of shit. What did I just tell you about the Bloody Mist?" he pointed out, pretty reasonably. "You think a man who encourages all that to happen is as goody-goody as your tree-hugging chieftain?"

"Does my brother know about this?" the boy demanded, eyes flickering back in the direction of the camp.

Zabuza snorted. "Boy, every shinobi in a village with a bingo book knows this. It's not exactly a secret."

The boy scowled, but hopped lightly off the fallen tree. "And working with Kon - Hanabi-ha?"

Damn. So much for avoiding that part.

"Hatake is honorable," he admitted grudgingly. "And what he's doing with Hana-ha is...understandable."

"What do you get out of it?"

"I dunno, citizenship or whatever," Zabuza hedged. "Look, boy, just hunt your godsdamned dinner."

After one miss, followed by one clean kill, Zabuza herded the Uchiha brat back to where they'd left his friends. The girl, mid-throw, nailed the center of the X with a solid thunk.

"Yeah, Sakura-chan!" the jinchuuriki cheered, to the girl's bashful smile.

"Four more," Zabuza ordered, and the girl jumped at his voice. The jinchuuriki yelped and clutched at his heart.

"H-hai," stuttered the girl, and fumbled another kunai from the pile at her feet.

Zabuza watched critically as each blade embedded themselves into the abused tree trunk, each only centimeters from the next.

"Hm," Zabuza grunted. "You - Hanpen - "

"Naruto!" the jinchuuriki yowled.

"Sure, whatever," he grumbled, and waved a hand at the target.

And to his surprise, the jinchuuriki managed to land each kunai on that tree. But although the first four did hit the target, the last tipped, sticking crookedly to the side of the trunk. The brat's eyes darted to Zabuza's face, and he bit his lip apprehensively.

Well, he was impressed, considering the improvement the jinchuuriki had managed to make in just an hour, but a rule was a rule. "Girl, you'll come with us. Sasa, tough luck. Keep practicing."

The jinchuuriki, too distracted to even correct Zabuza - he was pretty sure he'd gotten the brat's name wrong again - whined, "That's not fair! I almost had it!"

"A shinobi doesn't care about fair," Zabuza said dismissively. "And if you don't come into battle with a hundred percent confidence in your skills, you'll die painfully. Not to mention immediately. And embarrassingly."

"I can do it!" the jinchuuriki insisted. "Just give me another chance."

"You had a full hour to practice," said Zabuza. "More, actually."

"Come on!" the jinchuuriki whined, and Zabuza was tempted to give in just because the brat was so, so loud, and twice as annoying.

"He - he is doing pretty good," the girl piped up, and blinked innocently when his glare turned on her.

"Yeah," the Uchiha brat chimed in unexpectedly, and Zabuza rolled his eyes.

"Fine," he growled, just to get them all to shut up. "We're going to eat lunch. You can choose to either eat or practice. And if you can't do it by then, you get to do target practice until the sun goes down."

"Fine!" the jinchuuriki scowled, and stomped over to the tree.

Zabuza dug through his back pouch and pulled out a couple of wrapped ration bars. He tossed one to each of the brats and opened one for himself.

The girl peered at hers cautiously, while the boy peeled his open with only slight hesitation. Zabuza absently mused that it could have been a wonderful opportunity in training awareness for poisoning, if he'd thought of it ahead of time.

The girl took a bite and made such horrified grimace that Zabuza wondered if the bar had been poisoned after all.

"What is this?" she sputtered.

"It's a ration bar," grunted the Uchiha brat, gnawing at the end of his. "Shinobi take them on long-term missions when they won't have time to get food."

"I know what a ration bar is," the girl muttered, "but why does it taste like cardboard and wet paint?"

"They're not made for taste." The Uchiha couldn't hide his own disgusted shudder at the flavor.

Zabuza laughed. "You get used to it," he assured them faux reassuringly. He threw the last piece of bar into his mouth and crumpled the wrapper back into his pouch. "Hey, brat. Satsuma!"

"Naruto!" the jinchuuriki insisted.

"Yeah, that. You get one shot at five bullseyes. Let's see it," he ordered.

"Yeah!" the jinchuuriki cheered. "I got this, you'll see!" And to Zabuza's everlasting surprise, every single kunai hit the center of the target.

"Finally!" the girl sighed, waving her empty wrapper at the jinchuuriki.

The Uchiha brat just snorted. "Typical," he muttered.

"Great," said Zabuza unenthusiastically. "Let's go, we're burning daylight. Mini-Uchiha, take point. Go two kilometers past the river, or you won't find anything bigger than a mouse. And for gods' sake, don't make a racket."

Why were children so slow? Going at this crawl was frankly exhausting. How did they get anywhere? Didn't they get bored?

And yet - "Not so fast," he said, as the girl and jinchuuriki stood back from the Uchiha brat, who had a kunai hefted in one hand. "Each of you need to catch at least one rabbit before we head back - or I'm taking those - " he pointed at the rabbits dangling from the Uchiha's belt, " - and you all get to go hungry."

"What?" demanded the Uchiha brat, outraged, loud enough that the rabbit he'd been stalking startled at his voice and, well, rabbitted. Zabuza crossed his arms.

"Ha! Take that," the jinchuuriki jeered, honest-to-gods sticking his tongue out at the other boy. The girl looked torn between relieved and guilty.

"Better teach them well," Zabuza warned, "if you want to eat tonight."

The boy glared at him with such venom that it was almost intimidating. Like how baby sharks were kind of intimidating. Or, you know, cute in a toothy kind of way. Maybe in a couple years, when he unlocked those freaky swirly eyes. Zabuza gave him an insincere smile beneath the bandages.

With bad grace, the Uchiha brat turned to his companions with a glower. The jinchuuriki sneered back, while the girl offered him a hesitant smile.

Zabuza leaned back smugly to watch the show.

The Uchiha, the civilian girl, and the jinchuuriki - it sounded like the beginning of a bad joke - had managed to pull it together long enough to bag at least one rabbit each. Another three hours of painstaking instruction had seen the brats create an edible if very rudimentary stew.

And now, Zabuza was free of those little hellions for the rest of the night.

His nerves were about as close to frayed as they would ever get, and that was after just one day with the brats. He unslung the broadsword from his back, resting it across his knees, and rummaged through his pouch for a cleaning cloth. He ran the cloth over the flat of the blade methodically, letting the familiarity of the movement soothe him.

On the other side of the fire sat Haku, crosslegged, with a needle in one hand and a pile of torn clothes in his lap.

Haku was much better company. Much quieter. He eyed his apprentice over the fire and the remains of their own rabbit stew.

Too quiet. Something was up.

"You're quiet today." Zabuza frowned at his apprentice, absently running the cloth over his sword.

"Oh?" Haku responded politely, but didn't look up from the haori he was mending.

"Spit it out, kid," drawled Zabuza, hand stilling on his blade.

Haku pursed his lips, but said nothing.

"Haku. That's an order," he growled, eyebrows knitting together in warning. He set Kubikiribocho down, giving his apprentice his full attention.

Still the kid hesitated. "Zabuza-san," he said at last. "Am I - are you displeased with my work?"

Zabuza blinked, nonplussed. "Am I...what?"

"I lost the match against Gaara-kun," said Haku, eyes downcast, "and now I'm working with Shisui-san, and you have those three - "

"Hold on," said Zabuza.

" - children to train, and I made that squirrel stew even though I know you hate - "

"Shut up for a second, Haku," interrupted Zabuza, still trying to figure out where all of this was coming from. It wasn't like his apprentice to be insecure. "I don't care that you lost a sparring match against a jinchuuriki, and training those three brats was not my idea."

Haku still wasn't looking up.

Zabuza suppressed a sigh. "You're working with Shisui because he can teach you more than I can. What is Uchiha Shisui known for?"

"His incredible combat speed," Haku answered automatically. "And his shunshin."

"And what is your most basic advantage, with the Hyoton?" Zabuza prompted.

"Speed," his apprentice answered.

"Yeah, see?" Zabuza shrugged. "The girl's nothing special, and the Uchiha boy? We've got two of them already. The jinchuuriki is too loud, uncoordinated, and doesn't know shit . But you're something else. An instinctive grasp of chakra manipulation, innate control of your genkai kekkei, shinobi discipline - you're the most useful apprentice I could have right now."

The boy peered up at him. "You mean that, Zabuza-san?"

Zabuza grunted and sliced open his palm on his sword, smoothing the blood that welled up into the metal. "Just don't go trying to feed me squirrel again," he warned gruffly. "If the dogs want it, let the dogs have it."

"Hai," said Haku, his cheerfulness back in spades.

Zabuza watched him critically. Maybe spending all this time with Konoha shinobi and Konoha shinobi brats was making his apprentice sentimental. It better not give him anxiety or insecurities or whatever wishy-washiness they let themselves be swayed by.

As if on cue, Shisui ghosted up out of the fog. "Hey, Z," he said cheerfully. "Good day?"

Zabuza glared. "Fuck off," he snarled.

"Whoa there," Shisui said dryly. "Little extreme, don't you think?"

"Do you know how long it took them to catch six rabbits?" Zabuza demanded. "Six! Hours!"

"They're new at rabbit catching," Shisui pointed out.

"They can barely aim!"

Shisui muffled a snicker. "They'll get better."

Zabuza scowled. "They better," he growled. "Where's the yes-man?"

The playful expression on Shisui's face slammed shut, and his visible eye went hard. "Don't call him that," he said coldly.

Zabuza eyed the set of his jaw warily, the harsh angles of his face. This was not something to test the younger shinobi on. "Fine," he relented, not combative enough - and frankly too tired - to pick a fight. "Where's the brother bear?"

"Itachi is with San," Shisui relented, after one last warning glare. "She's showing him the perimeter of her territory as she patrols it."

Zabuza raised an eyebrow. "Who's watching the children, then?"

Shisui shrugged. "They're watching themselves. They're capable of it, and we're more worried about someone finding us than any of the kids running away,"

"It's not like anyone followed us," Zabuza grumbled. "I put down like six false trails and no one went after any of them."

"You know the captain's always cautious." Shisui walked a kunai through his fingers absently. "One day we won't get lucky. That's what Itachi's teaching his kids first, actually."

"Ah," Zabuza smirked. "Paranoia." That would be a fun lesson to teach his brats.

He came awake to the sound of hushed voices. For a moment, he was disoriented, but their chakra signatures were dim and passive, and he sensed no threat from any of them.

" - you know better than to wake a sleeping shinobi," said one.

"Yeah." A female voice. "But everyone else left already."

"And it's so late!" a third said shrilly. "What if he makes us catch rabbits again - "

"Oh my gods," interrupted the female voice. "Are his teeth pointy?"

"Well, he was from Kiri." The first voice.

"That's so cool!" enthused the third, and was immediately shushed by the first two.

Oh. His fucking brats. He groaned and threw his arm over his face. All three stopped talking abruptly.

"Uh, sensei?" said the girl hesitantly.

What the fuck do you want, Zabuza tried to say. It came out as, "Blrrrrrgh."

"Uh," said the girl.

"It's almost noon." The Uchiha.

"You're supposed to be training us right now, old man!" said the jinchuuriki.

"Naruto!" the sound of a fist hitting flesh, followed by a yelp.

Zabuza grabbed for his control over his killing intent as it slipped, so he could pretend like he hadn't pulled a double watch shift after losing cho-han to Shisui one too many times. "Call me that again and I'll drown you in a bucket," he growled. "Give me...thirty laps around the training hollow."

"Thirty?" the girl squeaked.

"Fine, fifty," Zabuza snapped. "Hop to it. If you're not done in an hour you can forget about anything other than endurance training for the next week."

"An hour?" the jinchuuriki squawked, but it was to the sound of little hellion feet fading from hearing before Zabuza could cut it down to half an hour.

The hollow wasn't that big, only about half a kilometer in length and half that in width. Which meant that one lap would be roughly two and a third kilometers, and fifty laps would be...almost a hundred and twenty kilometers. Huh. That had sounded a lot more reasonable in his head. That's what the brats got for making him do math in his head before he'd fully woken up.

He frowned briefly, tugging the bandages up over his nose and mouth, then shrugged. Endurance training it was.

Light footsteps, followed by the lighter click of claws on stone. Zabuza hauled himself upright just before the wolf-girl padded in, trailed by one of her wolves. "Oh, it's you," he muttered.

"San," the wolf-girl agreed, passing in front of him unconcernedly. "There are three of your pups generating noise outside. It is very loud."

The wolf snorted in agreement, pinning its ears briefly against its skull. It settled in a loose curl, resting its great head on crossed paws and regarding Zabuza with golden eyes.

Zabuza eyed it warily.

"That is Chie," said the wolf-girl.

The wolf blinked slowly.

"Oh," said Zabuza. He scruffed a hand through his hair, absently reaching around for his hitai-ate. "Inuzuka, right?" he grunted. "What brought you to Tetsu?"

"I was born here," said the wolf-girl. "My father was a chuunin who fled into Kusa to escape pursuers when severely wounded. My mother was a kunoichi from Iwa's Inuhara Clan whose superiors learned of a stray Inuzuka and sent her to seduce him, but they fell in love and ran away to Tetsu together."

Zabuza snorted involuntarily, then covered it with a cough. Love was a child's tale.

The wolf-girl watched him wryly. "Yes, it was too good to be true," she said. "Perhaps they loved each other once, but once I was born, her superiors told her to kill him. So she did. But he was a plant."

"...oh," said Zabuza lamely.

"Big story small," said the wolf-girl, "neither survived when each attempted to kill the other."

It was probably the wrong thing to fixate on, but… "Big story...small?"

The wolf-girl grimaced. "Big story - that is not what you say?"

"Long story short," Zabuza offered.

"Yes, that," said the wolf-girl. "And so I was raised by the wolf goddess in this, her forest."

Wolf goddess, uh, sure. "Right," said Zabuza. The feral was remarkably put together for someone literally raised by wolves. "But you still choose Konoha?"

"No," she said. "I chose Hatake Kakashi."

Zabuza raised an eyebrow. "A little young for him, aren't you?"

"Not as a mate," she said derisively. "He saved my life. And I have eighteen years."

"Eighteen?" She looked to be sixteen at most, close to Itachi's age rather than older than Shisui. He probed at the girl's chakra signature - it was tightly restrained, but Zabuza could sense it was larger than appeared. Interesting - she had shinobi training. "Who trained you?"

A flash of elongated canine. "My wolf-mother. She knows the ways of the ningen shinobi, even if she does not practice them."

"Hm," said Zabuza skeptically. What a strange child.

The wolf's ear flickered briefly towards the mouth of the cave, and the wolf-girl mirrored the movement with her entire head.

"Your pups are tiring," she noted.

Speaking of strange children. Zabuza grunted. "That was fast," he muttered, and hauled himself upright. "Later, I guess." He clumped outside to round up his pack of brats.

It was true. They did look tired. The Uchiha's pale face was splotchy with red, the jinchuuriki had lost his shirt somewhere along the way, and he could hear the girl's wheezing five meters away.

"Stop," he ordered. "You fail."

"That's not fair," the jinchuuriki complained immediately, and predictably. The girl stumbled to a halt halfway across the clearing, trudging towards him on wobbly legs.

"Tough luck," said Zabuza gleefully. "Shisui could run twice that in half the time and come out the other side battle-ready."

The Uchiha brat glared balefully, but Zabuza wasn't concerned. The little hellion didn't come anywhere near the intimidating he probably hoped he was, not when he looked like a bullfrog in mating season.

"Water break," he announced, clapping his hands together. "Fifteen minutes. When you get back, you better be ready to work hard."

The jinchuuriki let out a growl of mingled dismay and rage, but the girl tottered into him and sent them both to the ground in a dusty, sweat-soaked heap.

The morning was still young. Zabuza smiled maliciously beneath the bandages. Endurance training was fun because he didn't have to actually do anything - he could just tell the brats what to do.

Vertical sprints. Vertical sprints would do nicely.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Yes, Gaara Talks To Himself; No, He's Not Crazy (he doesn't think)

He's actually a pretty mellow, reasonable guy.

* * *

MISSION REPORT: D-21

Continued residence in [REDACTED].

All targets baseline status. All allied combatants and noncombatants baseline status.

Operative Cat-15 beginning to experience sustained physical fatigue.

Provisions remain basic: rice, tofu, produce acquired from local market. Other forms of sustenance recovered from environment.

Security status: low level risk due to civilian traffic in environment.

No contact with enemy combatants.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

* * *

"This one is dangerous. Kill him!"

"I don't think that's a good idea," Gaara mused thoughtfully. The black-haired shinobi standing before the three regarded each of them placidly. "He's one of the ones Nee-chan says is protecting us."

"That bitch. Filling your head with lies and empty promises. We don't need protecting. We protect ourselves." A curl of pride and possessiveness.

Gaara hummed agreement. "Don't call her that," he reminded absently. "I like her. She loves me."

"Pah!" Scorn. "I'm the only one who loves you."

Gaara shrugged ambiguously.

"As you know," said Uchiha Itachi, as Gaara returned his attention to the outside world, "I was a former Anbu captain of Konohagakure. I will be instructing you in stealth and infiltration, as well as combat."

"We don't need stealth." A derisive sneer.

"Yes, we do," disagreed Gaara. "Remember all those teams that chased us from Suna?"

A disgruntled huff.

"As shinobi, the art of going unnoticed is quite essential for everything from general travel to pitched battle," Uchiha Itachi continued. "However, for the three of you, it is exceptionally vital. For example - if you would each name what you believe your greatest strength to be?"

Sai blinked, and Hinata managed to shuffle her feet without actually moving. Gaara glanced from the others back to Uchiha Itachi.

He met his gaze and inclined his head towards Gaara. "Why don't you begin?"

"Telling us what to do? You should give me his blood. Crunch his bones into splinters." A flicker of bloodlust, which Gaara waved away.

"No," Gaara said patiently. "We're not killing him."

"Gaara?" the shinobi - Uchiha Itachi - prompted, when Gaara didn't respond.

"I am strong," he said aloud, "because of my sand." He let the grains swirl gently at his feet.

"And me!"

Gaara ignored that.

"Thank you, Gaara," said Uchiha Itachi, and turned his gaze on Hinata.

The girl jumped a little, ducking her head. "I-I-I," she stuttered.

"Weak." Dismissive, derisive. "Easy prey."

"She's quiet. I like that," Gaara retorted. "She doesn't get in our way."

"I-I have...m-my g-greatest strength a-are my e-eyes," she finally got out, and leaned away from Itachi subtly.

If the shinobi noticed, he didn't give any sign of it. He merely nodded acceptance and turned to Sai.

"I have received some Anbu training," the older boy said, straightening as the shinobi's attention shifted to him, "and my greatest strength is the ink jutsu I am able to utilize for combat, scouting, and sending and receiving messages."

"I bet his blood is the most umami." But even that was as half-hearted as it was wistful after months of Gaara's denials.

"Thank you," said Uchiha Itachi, and returned his gaze to the three. He clasped his hands neatly behind his back. "Each of you has named something valuable, something unique to each of you. While these are great assets, they are also known abilities to those hunting you. They make you a target."

Gaara turned the idea over in his head. He didn't like the sound of that.

"We are not a target! We are the ones doing the hunting!"

"Hinata, I believe it goes without saying that possessing a Byakugan, particularly an unsealed Byakugan, puts you at great risk," said Itachi, and at Gaara's side Hinata shrank back.

"Sai, there are few who use ink, and those who trained you in Konoha could use it to identify you," continued Itachi. Sai nodded thoughtfully in response, and only the way he pressed his lips together betrayed his displeasure.

"Gaara." Gaara's attention snapped back to the shinobi. "Your use of sand marks you as of Suna heritage to most, and to those in the know, of the Kazekage's line."

"That ingrown cactus! Should have ripped his head off when I had the chance."

Gaara growled agreement, clenching and unclenching his hands.

"I will teach you to be capable shinobi in spite of this. You will be an effective fighter, infiltrator, and leader without what you perceive to be your greatest strength," Uchiha Itachi continued. "Hinata, I will teach you to operate without your eyes; Gaara, with no sand - "

A deafening howl of outrage. " No sand ?"

" - and Sai, without your ink," Uchiha Itachi finished calmly, seemingly oblivious to the way the sand shifted agitatedly at Gaara's feet.

"Stop that," Gaara snapped harshly, though he himself was discomfited with the idea of fighting without his sand. At his side, Hinata darted nervous glances at him out of the corner of her eyes. "Look, you're scaring Hinata."

A sneer. "Pitiful." But the sand settled at his feet nonetheless.

"She can't help that she's weak," Gaara pointed out reasonably. "She doesn't have you, like I do."

A purr of satisfaction and agreement: temporarily mollified.

Uchiha Itachi's first lesson was hiding. This meant that Gaara, Hinata, and Sai would attempt to cross a clearing, a stream, and about fifty meters of forested land without being spotted by Itachi, perched in a tree somewhere in the middle.

Gaara did not realize how frustrating this would be.

He eyed the ground in front of him warily before stepping forward. His foot fell soundlessly, and he edged forward.

"This is stupid. If you kill them, they won't see you."

"We've been over this," said Gaara patiently. "Nee-chan always says that someone else notices when people turn up dead. Itachi-sensei is right - sneaking around is useful."

A derisive snort. " Sensei ."

"He's teaching us, isn't he?" Gaara pointed out.

"Stupid things."

"Quit distracting me," Gaara grumbled, annoyed, bringing his awareness back to his surroundings. "Sensei might be moving around."

"I'm listening for you."

That was true.

Gaara took another step forward, but the heel of his sandal crunched as he flattered a dead leaf. He froze.

"Gaara," Itachi-sensei's voice drifted between the trees. "Go back and start again."

Gaara bared his teeth in a soundless snarl, and his sand whipped through the air in response. The frustration and resentment and glee built up, welling in Gaara like a whirling sandstorm -

"Cut it out, you're making this harder," Gaara snapped, and the malicious delight dropped away suddenly with an air of sulking. He let the sand drift back down as he turned to cross back over the stream.

Hinata darted past, taking cover behind a fallen tree. Gaara watched her interestedly. A faint blush was dusted across her cheeks, but though her eyes were wide, she wasn't trembling. Instead of panicked, she seemed almost...excited.

"Hinata, you're out," called Itachi-sensei. "Gaara, don't give away your teammates."

Ah. Stupid.

"Shut up," he growled over the taunting snickers. "You're supposed to be helping me." He eyed Hinata, who wore an absent expression as she came up beside him, but she didn't look too put out.

"T-this is h-harder than it s-sounded," she murmured.

"Hn," said Gaara in agreement, surveying the terrain with narrowed eyes. Ten meters past the stream, Sai crouched in the hollow between protruding roots of a large tree. As he watched, the older boy vaulted neatly over the roots and disappeared to the other side.

"D-do you t-think he'll m-make it?" Hinata whispered.

Gaara frowned. No, probably not.

He edged around the side of the clearing cautiously amd sank into a low crouch behind an old stump. He peeked around the side, and seeing no sign of Itachi-sensei, sidled forward.

Hinata scampered off in the other direction, flitting neatly over the stream and disappearing into the undergrowth.

An indignant growl. "She left us!"

"I left her first," Gaara pointed out absently. He leaned down onto all fours, creeping lightly across the surface of the stream, and came up with his back against the trunk of a tree.

"Sai, start over," came Itachi-sensei's voice. Gaara took the opportunity to slink around his tree and past the bush he'd been caught at before.

"If you burrow underground, he won't catch you."

"Sensei said don't use sand," reminded Gaara, "and I need sand for that." He squinted, peering through the leaves in the direction Itachi-sensei's voice had come from.

"That's a stupid rule." Resentment, slowly roiling agitation.

"If I get stronger without our sand, I'll be twice as strong when I do use it," Gaara said logically. He crept sideways, then slunk forward to the base of a large tree.

He eyed it with narrowed eyes, then the forest beyond. Silent. He wound up and sprang. He landed lightly in the fork between two large branches, his chakra cushioning his landing. The tree barely twitched. He froze, straining his ears, but heard nothing. Success.

"You don't need to be stronger. You have me."

Gaara couldn't think of a response to that, so he ignored it. He inched upwards, sticking to the trunk with hands and feet like a lizard, then along a long bough that stretched out among the branches of one of the adjoining trees.

Sitting back on his haunches, he reached out with one careful hand and placed it on the branch. He leaned forward and it didn't move, so he crept along that as well until he perched in the fork between branch and trunk.

He peered below him, hand stuck firmly to the tree, to see Hinata slither through a bush without disturbing the branches. With barely a pause under Gaara's tree, she flowed forward in a controlled roll over the crest of a little ridge to come up against a small boulder jutting up from the ground.

A flash of something light drew his attention, and he glanced over in time to see Sai to leap gracefully from one tree to the next with a barely-audible thump. His eyes flicked towards where Uchiha-sensei had been hiding, but nothing happened.

Emboldened, Gaara prowled onto the next branch and reached over. His foot slipped, and he found himself grasping at air as he tipped off the branch.

He twisted midair even as he plummeted, turning to land feet first, but a plume of sand blossomed beneath him and cushioned his fall before he hit the ground. Hinata let out a muffled yelp as she was sprayed with the loose grains.

"Hey!" Gaara snapped. "I said no sand!"

Equal parts indignation and smugness. "That wasn't me. That was all you."

Gaara simmered and banished the sand with a jerk of his hand.

"Gaara, Hinata, back to the start," called Uchiha-sensei. "Gaara, suppress your sand."

They went.

Again behind the stream, Gaara pounced lightly over its surface to the opposite bank without disturbing the surface of the water, and dove behind a tree.

"Something's happening."

Gaara ignored that in favor of slithering carefully through a small thicket.

"Listen." More insistent.

He could see Sai, still clinging to the side of a tree with enviable ease, almost twenty meters ahead of him. Hinata was still behind him, slipping carefully through the -

" Listen !"

His hearing sharpened without warning, and he flinched at the suddenly loud noise.

" - not even a clone?" It took a moment for Gaara to place the voice as one of the other shinobi - Shisui, the black-haired one missing an eye.

"No," came Itachi-sensei's calm voice, muted. "This stage of their training I will oversee myself."

A soft exhale. "My, Itachi, such a responsible sensei you make," said the other shinobi, something strange - warmth? - in his voice.

A moment of silence. "Did you need something, Shisui?" Itachi-sensei asked politely.

"Aa," said Shisui readily. "What do you say we take turns having the teams hunt for dinner for everyone? I'm thinking it'll be good for them."

Itachi-sensei contemplated this. "I am agreeable. It would be good practice."

"Zabuza agreed to have his team take care of tonight," said the other. "You can do tomorrow if you want."

"He agreed." Sensei's voice was dry. "Very well, we will take care of dinner tomorrow."

"Hm, is that one of your kids? Awfully brazen, isn't he?" the other shinobi said, amused, and Gaara heard a small puff.

"Sai, begin again!" Itachi-sensei's voice boomed in his ear, and Gaara flinched, stepping back, as his hands clapped over his head instinctively. A twig cracked under his heel as his hearing returned to normal. "Gaara as well," Sensei added, and Gaara growled.

By the time Itachi-sensei called a halt, the sun's rays filtered only weakly through the trees. "Each of you has shown significant improvement. We will resume tomorrow morning," said Sensei. "Please return to camp, and I will join you there in time."

In the end, predictably, Sai had managed to make it the furthest - nearly halfway to the target.

This does not particularly bother Gaara.

"How dare that no-name outperform us? We should kill him for this insult."

"No," said Gaara shortly, too tired to elaborate after six hours of attempting to traverse the same seventy meters. His stomach felt hollow - they'd trained the entire day and skipped lunch, which was not new but still unpleasant.

"Just a little sand, is all it would take. He would twitch, kick a little. His eyes would bug out, all that lovely blood would just flow straight to his face - "

"Shut up!" Gaara snapped, forcing the sand down when it started to rise instinctively.

"G-Gaara-san, a-are you a-all right?" Hinata asked timidly, to his side and about half a step behind him. "Y-you're quieter t-than normal."

"Fine," Gaara said shortly.

"That was a long session," Sai noted placidly, but Gaara could see the slightest slump in his normally impeccable posture.

"He's weakened. Kill him now!"

"Shut up," Gaara repeated, fighting to keep the sand from rising again.

"I w-wonder if a-all our t-training sessions w-will be t-this l-long," Hinata murmured. Her exhaustion showed in her stumbling steps, much louder than they had been when she'd flitted lightly through the woods.

"Tomorrow, we hunt," Gaara said. "Heard Itachi-sensei talking to Uchiha Shisui."

"Ah," said Sai thoughtfully. "I see. It would serve as a valuable learning experience while providing resources for the group."

"H-have you h-hunted before, G-Gaara-san, Sai-s-san?" Hinata asked. "I-I only k-know how to t-trap animals l-like N-Neko-sensei t-taught us."

" Yes . Remember that last Anbu, how we tracked him, cowering on the ground like a rabbit? How we crushed his legs when he tried to flee, how he begged and screamed and bled?" Purred, like a sated cat.

"No," said Gaara abruptly.

"I have not either," Sai answered. "I'm sure Itachi-sensei will instruct us."

The spot Uchiha-sensei had chosen for their training was quite a distance from the clearing beyond the caves. Gaara had been reliably informed that this was because 'you don't spill blood near your den' but the long walk annoyed him nonetheless.

As they finally reached the caves, Gaara's limbs were shaking as little-used muscles trembled with the effort it had taken to hold tensed positions for so long.

At least, since he was going back, he would see Nee-chan again. This cheered him slightly.

"Bah. You shouldn't put so much thought into her."

Gaara ignored this with the ease of long practice.

Unfortunately, Nee-chan's team wasn't back yet. Naruto's team was, though - an acceptable substitute.

"Danger. Dangerous!" Hissed, then a pause. "Loud."

This latter half at least was true. But Naruto was not just loud, he was bright and warm like the sun hanging over the desert he had not seen in nearly two years. And maybe like the sun to unaware travellers he was dangerous, but Gaara had not seen any sign of danger from him. In fact, he was generally harmless.

A growled disagreement.

"Gaara!" the jinchuuriki cheered gleefully, bounding towards them energetically. Gaara sniffed the air - the scent of blood preceded Naruto, and his shirt was splattered with it. "Hi, Hinata! Hi, Sai!"

"Get back here, Naruto!" Sakura cried. Her forearms too were stained with red. Behind her, Sasuke stood as well, a half-shucked rabbit dangling from his hand by its ears.

Gaara wrinkled his nose and stepped back when the blond lunged to tackle him. "What are you doing?"

Hinata edged away delicately. "A-ano, y-you have s-something on y-your s-shirt," she said timidly.

"This is dinner!" Naruto explained, turning back reluctantly to the mess next to the fire. "We hunted some rabbits and now we're cooking them!"

A dubious expression flitted across Sai's face.

Gaara agreed. The last time Naruto had cooked, half the vegetables had been raw, the other half soggy. Temari-nee-chan still didn't let him prepare meat.

"I-I'm sure i-it will be d-delicious," Hinata said loyally. Gaara frowned.

Naruto beamed.

"Uh, we?" Sakura demanded. "Not if you keep slacking off!"

Naruto drooped dramatically. "I'm coming, I'm coming," he groaned, and slouched his way back to his team.

"Let's wash up," suggested Sai, turning away from the squabbling trio. "It seems we will have some time before dinner."

"But all that blood will go to waste! Those stupid brats will just throw it out."

"It's just rabbit blood," Gaara dismissed, and followed Sai to the adjoining ravine. He disliked the stickiness of sweat, and the way his legs still trembled with every step. A dip in the river would at least stop the first.

He stripped down to the skin, and tossing his clothes in a careless pile, waded into the stream past Sai folding his own clothes neatly at the bank.

The shock of the cold did nothing for Gaara's temper, but he let himself sink neck-deep in the water anyways.

"Too cold! I don't like this."

"Yes," said Gaara, "but clean is better than sticky. Even if it is cold."

A snarl of disagreement. A pulse of warm chakra flooded Gaara's body, burning away the numbing cold. Gaara hummed at the sensation, closing his eyes. "Warm baths are nice," he murmured.

"Hmph." A reluctant, rumbling purr. "Just remember that it is I who loves you."

As the days grew shorter, Gaara became much better at sneaking.

He pulled the hood of his cloak lower over his head. Though heavy, the fur lining kept him warm despite the chill that sank into the trees like the snowfall.

That, he did not like. Snow was heavy and wet and cold and made sneaking hard even though the sound was muffled.

"Too wet." This was grumbled. "Too cold."

In his head, it was quieter too.

"Gaara," Sai hissed. "Up that tree. Hinata, left and press him at the signal."

Gaara darted up the tree, landing lightly in the white-frosted boughs. His cloak settled lightly around him without disturbing a single flake of snow.

Narrowing his eyes, he spotted a flash of black hair seven meters ahead of him. "Wait," he muttered. "Sai, continue circling. He will escape to the north unless you keep going."

A hint of light cloth was all he could see as Sai moved, flitting lightly over the snow. No movement from the target.

"Now," Gaara snarled, and dove out of his tree, three kunai in each hand. His cloak billowed out behind him as he leapt.

The target turned, weaving neatly out of the first volley of kunai. Hinata burst out of the bushes three meters away from him, lunging with open-handed strikes that the target deflected easily. A hard strike knocked her backwards several steps.

Gaara leapt forward as she faltered, launching another kunai from beneath his cloak. At the same time, Sai darted out from behind the target, bringing his tanto forward.

Gaara yanked on the wire, bringing the kunai back to wrap the target's arms to his torso as Sai delivered a debilitating slash at the target's calf. Hinata lunged back in, landing a hard strike to the center of the target's chest.

The target vanished in a swirl of crows.

The wire attached to Gaara's kunai went slack, and he snarled wordlessly. But despite his frustrated rage, he did not let his sand so much as stir.

"Good work," said Itachi-sensei serenely, dropping neatly out of a nearby tree. "The plan was sound, your teamwork commendable." He paused, meeting each of their gazes - Gaara simmering, Hinata defeated, Sai blank-faced as always. "However, you were overly fixated on what you perceived to be the target and failed to notice a basic trap."

Sai's eyes narrowed as he sheathed his tanto.

"T-that is n-not a trap w-we will f-fall for t-twice," Hinata murmured.

Gaara grunted in agreement, flexing his fingers absently.

"This drill is over," said Sensei implacably. "I believe it is our team's turn to prepare dinner."

Gaara sighed through his nose. He didn't want to hunt animals, that was no challenge - he wanted to hunt people.

"Perhaps we should try a moose," Sai suggested. "It would be enough for several meals, and we could have uninterrupted training for a week."

Ah, Gaara liked this plan. No hunting for a week. And a moose? That would prove a greater challenge than the little rabbits that flitted across the top of the snow.

"You are welcome to try," said Itachi-sensei contemplatively. "Chie scented some along the northwestern border, and freezing meat for storage is no issue."

Gaara exchanged glances with Sai and Hinata.

"Ah, ano," said Hinata hesitantly. "This is n-not a training m-mission…" she trailed off.

"Very well," Itachi-sensei said almost indulgently. "All ability restrictions are off. You may use whatever tools and techniques you wish."

"Yes!" The sand stirred of its own volition, twisting up out of his pack to wrap around Gaara like a second skin. "Finally."

"It's been a week since I trained with our sand," Gaara reminded, but couldn't deny the hint of warmth that curled up inside.

"A week too long."

"Let's get started," said Sai, anticipation coloring his voice as he pulled a scroll and brush out from under his cloak. Under his deft strokes, a pack of inky black wolves bloomed on the paper and pounced out in front of him.

Hinata's eyes opened with the Byakugan, and she lifted her head. "N-nothing in my r-range yet," she murmured, as Sai's beasts leapt past.

"We'll see you back at camp, Sensei," called Sai absently, darting after the ink-wolves.

"You will," Itachi-sensei's voice drifted through the trees, as Gaara chased after his teammate with Hinata on his heels.

The wolves split off, and Gaara followed as Sai hurtled a fallen tree. He landed lightly on top of the snow, leaving only the shallowest footprints in the light powder.

"Moose scent. North."

"North," Gaara said, and Sai angled down the side of the mountain.

"I s-see tracks i-in the v-valley," said Hinata.

"Take point," Sai directed, and slowed to let her overtake him.

Hinata flitted past, zigzagging her way down into the valley.

Gaara stopped as Hinata crouched by the blurred tracks, scrutinizing the snow fields with narrowed eyes. He tilted his nose up to scent the air again.

"T-These are t-too small. E-elk prints," Hinata murmured, hovering a finger over the trail. "A l-large h-herd, passed t-through only r-recently."

"Elk everywhere. Old tracks."

"What about the moose?" prodded Gaara.

A disgruntled grumble.

"We're not looking for elk today," dismissed Sai. "Are there moose prints?"

"N-not here," Hinata said absently, and lifted her head as her gaze focused on something far-off. "T-there," she said. "L-larger hoofprints."

A pair of Sai's ink-wolves loped across the field, crisscrossing the river valley. Gaara watched them go absently.

"Not true prey. No blood."

"We do not kill wolves," reminded Gaara, "not even fake wolves. Wolves are friends."

"Pah!" Gaara ignored the rising distaste with the ease of long practice. "We don't have friends."

"W-When was the l-last snowfall?" asked Hinata, breath coming in visible puffs.

"Two days ago," answered Sai. "The tracks may not be fresh."

"Some wind," Gaara pointed out. "It would have covered up the tracks if they were not fresh."

"True," said Sai, and crouched along the tracks. He reached out with one hand then a second, splaying out his fingers, and barely matched the size off the hoofprint. "We will be the first team to attempt to take down prey of this size," he noted absently. "We will have to be careful if we are to succeed."

"Aa," Hinata agreed. "S-san-sensei said e-even wolves are c-cautious when h-hunting prey as l-large as a m-moose." She frowned suddenly. "These t-tracks are leading t-towards the w-western border of San-s-sensei's territory. W-we should h-hurry if we want to c-catch them."

"Understood," said Sai, and straightened. From all directions, shadowy streaks converged on their position as he recalled his ink-beasts. "Follow my lead," he directed, and took off after the trail.

Running Gaara did not particularly enjoy, but after long hours of training with Itachi-sensei, he grudgingly admitted that his speed and endurance had increased significantly. As he loped after Sai, the cold air bit unpleasantly into his lungs, but the pace he knew he could keep for hours. The wolves split off as they crossed into the next valley.

"Keep us on track, Hinata," Sai directed, and veered along the side of the valley instead of dropping down into its trough.

"I-I see it," Hinata murmured. "O-one, moving a-at a s-steady pace. I-it's a-almost at the w-western border."

"We need to cut it off." Sai increased the pace until Hinata and Gaara were sprinting after the older boy, and down in the valley, two pairs of inky wolves streaked across the valley floor.

Gaara chanced a glance down as the bulky animal gradually came into view. The ink-beasts were gaining on the moose, galvanizing the larger animal into a rough gallop.

The rocky shelf cut off abruptly, and Sai leapt from the lip. "Gaara!" he called sharply.

Gaara threw out his hands, and the sand shot out from his pack and caught Sai in a billowing cushion, then himself and Hinata as they followed him over the edge.

"W-we're not g-going to m-make it," Hinata panted, eyes locked faraway even as she crouched on the sand platform hurtling down the side of the mountain.

Gaara narrowed his eyes, straining to control their fall. He jerked the sand to the side, narrowly avoiding a rocky outcrop, and Sai nearly overbalanced over the edge of the makeshift platform. Gaara frowned, yanking the sand higher. The others were just so breakable, and it was hard to account for their squirming.

"Just let them fall."

"Go back to being quiet," Gaara grunted, and received only a grumble in response.

Sai sprang off the platform as they neared the foot of the slope, and Gaara let the sand crash into the ground. Hinata yelped as the sand crumbled beneath her, tripping off onto the uneven ground. Gaara blinked at her bemusedly, landing lightly beside her. She could see everything; why hadn't she seen that?

"G-go," Hinata wheezed at him, waving a hand weakly.

With a mental shrug, Gaara took off after Sai's rapidly retreating back, summoning his sand back into his pack.

The thunder of heavy hooves rattled the earth beneath his feet as he ran, but even as he sprinted he could see they would not be fast enough.

One of the ink-wolves stretched out and snapped at the leg of the moose, but a violent buck of its hind hooves splattered the beast into a spray of droplets.

In just a few seconds, the moose would cross out of San's territory. Sai launched himself into a desperate pounce, tanto out, and the blade missed the rearmost leg of the moose by centimeters. He landed in a crouch, sinking in the snow, as his three remaining wolves pulled up short, circling back to him as the moose thundered on. A frown of frustration darkened his eyes as he watched it go.

Gaara bared his teeth - he wasn't going to let this prey escape. He sprinted straight past, throwing out his sand in a wide, flat band.

"Gaara!" called Sai sharply, but Gaara didn't listen, not when he had this.

The moose lowed in alarm as it turned at the last minute, crashing shoulder-first into the wall of sand. Forced back around, the moose lowered its head and trained its rack of antlers on Gaara, who skittered back a couple steps in spite of himself.

The moose charged.

Gaara threw up his hands in front of him, and the sand shot up in front of him as he crossed his arms. The sand sprayed as the animal slammed into the other side, but the shield held. "Help me," he gritted out.

Disinterest, shaded by amusement. "You're fine. The ink-boy is coming."

The moose bellowed as Sai swept in from the side, rearing around antlers-first and forcing the older boy to leap backwards, then turn tail and run as it charged after him.

Hinata was there in an instant, flinging a pair of kunai at the moose's other side, but the animal didn't change its course until Sai's three remaining ink-wolves harried it from behind, nipping at its hind legs.

It turned faster than Gaara expected, whirling on gangly legs, and slammed a flailing hoof into one of the wolves. It splattered in a shower of ink, and the remaining two dodged out of the way as Sai darted back in.

"Enough. Cease allowing this prey-beast to make a fool of you."

"Give me more sand, then!" Gaara snarled.

A derisive snort. "If you can't reach the sand beneath the snow by yourself, then you don't deserve to use it."

Gaara bared his teeth but reached, straining to reach, but only a pitiful handful of sand rose to his call, shooting up from the ground to join the swarm circling in front of him.

Hinata leapt in and out, landing a single open-handed strike before retreating out of reach of the moose's range, just as it lashed out with both front hooves at Sai, who rolled out of the way.

Gaara gritted his teeth and yanked, and a shower of sand burst from the snow. Immediately, he hurled a sand-claw at the moose's leg and clenched his fist. A resounding crack split the air, and the moose bellowed in pain and rage as its leg shattered in a spray of blood.

A purr of satisfaction.

Sai was there in an instant, driving the entirety of his blade into the base of its neck even as its antlers decimated another ink-wolf with a blundering lurch. It wrenched away, ripping the tanto from Sai's grasp, and trampled the last ink-wolf. Sai whirled out of the way, but the tip of an antler raked across his torso and caught briefly on the edge of his cloak before ripping away.

The moose staggered and crashed to the ground, eyes rolling wildly as its legs flailed uselessly. Blood leaked steadily from its ruined leg, and the satisfaction rumbled through Gaara viscerally as his sand soaked it up.

Hinata hopped neatly over the jerking antlers and delivered an almost delicate two-fingered tap to the moose's chest. At once, its legs jerked, then slackened, and its head collapsed bonelessly to the ground.

The blood roaring in Gaara's ears subsided, and they looked at each other over the still-warm body in silence. Hinata's hands were trembling as she released her genkai-kekkei. Sai's were clamped over the graze above his stomach. All three were splattered in blood, though admittedly Gaara seemed to be the only one that did not seem to mind. For a moment, they simply stared, chests heaving, at the animal they had felled.

"We succeeded," said Sai finally, leaning over to retrieve his tanto.

The impression of an eyeroll. "No shit."

"That's a bad word," Gaara reminded. "Don't - "

"Succeeded? Perhaps," said Itachi-sensei icily. Gaara repressed a full body flinch, and Hinata's eyes grew comically wide. Sai let go of the tanto's hilt and took a wary step backwards.

"Oh. Shit."

With a sinking feeling, Gaara didn't respond. When he turned, Itachi-sensei was regarding the team evenly, with displeasure wrapped around him like a cloak.

"Itachi-sensei," Sai greeted calmly, but his eyes flickered to the side, betraying his apprehension.

"I am quite certain that each of you understood that you were to remain within the borders of San's territory at all times," Itachi-sensei said implacably. "Yet at least one of you ventured beyond."

Gaara resisted the urge to seethe when Sai's eyes tracked first the disturbed snow and flurry of footprints clearly continuing beyond the border, then flitted briefly to Gaara before returning to Itachi-sensei. He was fairly certain that Itachi-sensei already knew not only how many, but who had done it.

"I apologize, Sensei," said Sai smoothly. "We merely became caught up in the - "

"No," said Itachi-sensei, and Sai cut himself off abruptly. "I will not accept these excuses from you. From any of you," he warned, turning his icy glare on Hinata, who quailed, and Gaara, who bristled.

"It was for prey!" Sulkily, with an undercurrent of resentment.

"Gaara," said Itachi-sensei. "What is the reason you were told not to leave San's forest?"

"Making demands of us?" This was sneered. "We should smear him into a paste."

"There are many enemies hunting us and staying in the forest keeps us safe," Gaara said grudgingly.

"Specifically?" Itachi-sensei prodded.

The roiling resentment took on an increasingly darker edge. Gaara forced it down and bit back the urge to snarl. "Suna wants me and my sister, Konoha wants everyone else, Kumo and Iwa would want all of us, and the samurai from northern Tetsu would want to kill us for being shinobi," he recited dully. "A combination of seals and interference from the natural chakra produced in San's forest hides us as long as we stay in her territory."

"Yet," Itachi-sensei said deliberately, "you did not."

Gaara narrowed his eyes and said nothing. The silence that followed was almost deafening. The longer it dragged on, the more disappointment Gaara could read in his stare.

"Consider all ability restrictions back in effect," said Itachi-sensei finally. "All of you are confined to camp for the next week."

Naruto would explode in protests. Neji would argue with a heat veiled by logic. But Gaara's team just stared at their feet.

"I will ask San to retrieve the animal. The three of you, return to camp at once," Itachi-sensei ordered. "Do not leave unless you are given permission to do so. Sai, have that wound looked at."

"Hai," murmured Sai, and was quickly echoed by Hinata. Gaara jerked his head in a resentful nod when Itachi-sensei glanced at him.

"Go," said Itachi-sensei, and the three of them began their humiliating trek back to camp.

Gaara did not like Hyuuga Neji much, but this was because Neji saw everything - unlike Hinata, who was supposed to see everything but couldn't. This meant that Neji could see Gaara's sand sneaking up behind him during spars, or the special chakra Gaara used when he got angry.

Today, that meant he saw the way Hinata practically slunk into camp, the slump in Sai's normally impeccable posture, and how Gaara seethed as he stormed in.

"What is going on?" the older boy demanded, eyes flicking between the blood-splattered team and the tunnel entrance. "Hinata-sama, are you injured? Were you attacked?"

"N-n-no," Hinata whispered. "No, I-I'm f-fine. There's n-no d-danger."

Neji narrowed his eyes. "What happened?" he snapped, turning on Sai.

Sai lifted his hand to peer at the wound beneath. "Our team attempted to take down a more challenging prey and crossed out of San's territory," he said shortly.

"You left the territory?" Neji's lip curled derisively. "You were injured by a prey animal?"

"Yes," Sai bit out coldly, leveling Neji with a blank stare.

"Gaara!" Nee-chan's surprised call cut over Neji's disdainful snort as she rushed towards them, and her focus zeroed in on Sai's bloodied hands. "Sai, have Shisui-sensei take a look at that," she ordered. "He's above the gorge - "

"I am forbidden from leaving camp," Sai interrupted monotonously.

Nee-chan pursed her lips briefly in a frown. "Neji, get Sensei," she directed, and Neji turned away with a huff. Gaara watched him go a little bitterly. Just the knowledge that the older boy could leave when he could not stung, and he'd only been back in camp for a minute. He turned away.

"Gaara!" Nee-chan called after him, but Gaara wasn't in the mood to talk to even her and stalked to the sleeping quarters.

Gaara did not sleep, but he had a bunk in the cave anyways. He swung up the first stack to the topmost hammock and slouched against the wall, slinging his cloak around him as he glowered into the dim. The cave was empty except for him, but half-filled knapsacks, weapons, and cooking supplies littered the floor in small clumps.

He wasn't in the mood to do anything except stew. He wrestled his pack off, and for a moment considered just hurling it and the sand within at the opposite wall.

"Don't." A sleepy grumble and warning in one.

Gaara scowled and settled for shoving it to the bunk frame until it dangled off the edge.

"Quit sulking and just kill him already. We don't need to listen to that insect."

"He's the sensei," Gaara grunted. "I can't not listen to him."

A sneer. "So you'll just let him push you around? Weak."

Gaara bristled. "I'm not weak, I - "

"Gaara?" said Nee-chan.

"That bitch!" Gaara's head reeled under the onslaught of unbridled rage. "Daring to interrupt us - "

"Shut up!" Gaara snarled, and forced the fury back down.

" - gotten bandaged, and your team still needs to cook," he heard her say as his senses returned to normal. He peered down at her.

The wry tilt to her mouth deepened as she regarded him, hands resting lightly on her hips. "I heard what happened. I know you're not afraid of what's out there," she said, "but Itachi-sensei's right. If any of us use our chakra outside San's territory, we're sending up a beacon to our enemies."

Gaara glowered at her.

She sighed and reached out a hand to him. "Come here," she said.

Gaara considered.

"Don't do it."

He huffed and slithered down the bunk frame laboriously to the rumble of an annoyed growl.

Temari-nee carded a hand through his hair, and he half-closed his eyes at the sensation, letting the motion soothe the resentment that had built up over the course of the day. "The rules are stupid," he muttered.

"They keep us safe," Nee-chan corrected, but the gentle scratch of her fingers kept him from getting too annoyed. "Come on, otouto. I brought you out of Suna for a reason, and I won't let them take you back now."

A snort. "As if she could let anyone do anything."

"Quiet," Gaara admonished absently, leaning into her hand.

"Good job killing that moose, by the way," she added, fingers stilling in his hair. "San and Yuuki just brought it in."

Gaara hummed, displeased - that stupid moose was the reason he couldn't leave this place. But then Temari-nee brushed through his hair again and his annoyance melted away.

"Go on, help your team," said Temari, ruffling his hair one last time, before leaning over to snag one of the kunai holsters scattered on the ground.

Gaara frowned. He didn't particularly want to help his team.

A derisive scoff. "So don't."

But if he didn't, Temari-nee would give him the sad eyes and frown and wouldn't pet his hair.

The impression of rolled eyes. "For Kami's sake. You're a simple child, aren't you?"

No, Gaara was a special child. That's what Nee-chan said.

When Gaara ducked out of the cave and through the tunnel to the small training gorge, Sai was crouching next to the moose with a kunai, prodding the wound in its chest cautiously. San sat cross-legged on his other side, gesturing at the animal and leaning comfortably against her sprawled-out wolf, mindless of the snow carpeting the frozen ground. Gaara scented the air. Yuuki. Hinata leaned over her shoulder, listening carefully to whatever she was explaining.

Her eyes flicked upwards as Gaara approached. "Ah, Gaara. Come to learn to fish?"

Gaara blinked, nonplussed.

"She is referencing an old adage," Sai offered helpfully. "That if one teaches a man to fish, one feeds the man for a lifetime."

"Yes," San agreed. "I will teach you to fish this moose now. It is like butchering elk, but bigger."

Gaara eyed the trail the carcass had left in the snow when it had been dragged into camp. The animal was easily double the size of an elk, nearly one and a half times the height of Chie or Yuuki and twice their bulk.

"This will take many hours," San explained placidly. "First, you will remove the organs. Then, you will peel off the skin. All of it, at once, in one piece."

She watched them expectantly. Sai turned back to the animal resolutely, and Gaara crouched next to him, slipping a kunai out of his holster.

A sniff. "So unnecessary. Just eat it like it was meant to be eaten: fresh."

Gaara wrinkled his nose.

"Start at the stomach, Gaara," said Sai. "Hinata, start at the neck. I'll take the head off."

"The top of the neck is most vulnerable," San added. "It will come off easily if you cut there." She proffered a curved knife, entirely white, and when Sai took it, Gaara saw it was one made entirely of bone.

Sai passed off his kunai to Hinata, who shuffled up next to Gaara.

Gaara eyed the corpse carefully, then jabbed the kunai through hair and hide. As he worked, he heard familiar footsteps padding softly over packed snow.

"Temari, Neji," San greeted. "Good. You will learn to fish moose as well."

A confused pause. Gaara hid a twinge of amusement as he hacked his way across the animal's stomach.

"Of course," Nee-chan said belatedly. Her sandals shuffled as she settled into a more comfortable position.

This was not the first time Gaara's team had butchered an animal. Sai moved around him, cracking open the pelvis and breastbone. Hinata pried windpipes and other tubes from the throat.

Absently, Gaara reached for the wire Hinata handed him to tie off the entrails before hauling them out in one giant, sloppy mess. They slid out easily for the most part, and when they did not, Gaara reached in with one arm, then his entire torso, to hack out the stubborn bits. Even in the rapidly cooling air, the insides were still warm, and the intestines sank a little as the snow around them melted. He swiped at the blood splattered on his face and only succeeded in smearing it.

"Leave it. I like it."

Even with three of them working, an hour passed before they fully separated the pelt from the rest of the carcass.

"Hey, hey!" Anyone could hear Naruto coming before they saw him. Sometimes Gaara wondered how he'd managed to sneak out of Hi no Kuni without giving his entire group away. "Wow! Did you guys kill this thing? That's awesome!"

"We will show respect for the animals that give their lives so that we can eat," San intoned pointedly, as Temari hefted the rolled pelt and Neji dragged the head towards the snow-hollow they kept their food in by its antlers. "We do not call their sacrifice 'awesome.'"

Predictably, Naruto was unperturbed. "Oh, man, it's so big! We could eat it for, like, a year!"

"Only if you want to starve, idiot," Sasuke cut in. The fur lining of his hood was dusted in snow, and his cheeks were flushed from the cold or perhaps exertion. "A month, if that's all we ate."

"Ugh," muttered Sakura. "Remember when we ate only rabbit for weeks because that was the only thing we knew how to catch?"

Gaara made a face.

"You may freeze some and salt-smoke-dry the rest," said San. "There is no need to eat all at once."

"So, when's dinner?" Naruto demanded, having clearly lost interest in San's explanation halfway through.

Gaara sawed his way through a lower leg joint and tossed the severed limb behind him.

"Sai, Gaara, and Hinata are currently occupied." San paused and eyed the newly arrived team thoughtfully. "Sai will give you some meat, and you will prepare dinner in their stead," she decided.

"Hey!" Naruto sputtered indignantly.

"We had dinner duty yesterday," Sakura pointed out. "We rotate."

"Do you wish to eat tonight?" San leaned back into her wolf unconcernedly. "I will not allow this team to stop until they have finished fishing this moose, and that may not happen until the moon is high."

Sakura, Naruto, and Sasuke exchanged glances. "Fishing...the moose?" said Sakura hesitantly.

Hinata dropped another lower leg bone onto the ground. "I-It's a s-saying, about l-learning new s-skills," she explained.

"Fishing the moose," Naruto repeated, face screwed up in concentration.

"Just give us the meat," muttered Sasuke. "We'll make dinner, whatever."

"Hey, bastard, don't you think that we should decide that as a team?" Naruto demanded.

"Do you want to eat?" his teammate fired back. "Sakura agrees with me."

Sakura shrugged when Naruto whipped around to glare at her accusingly. "I want dinner."

Sai slit the connective tissue off a bundle of muscle and tossed it at Naruto, who fumbled but caught it instinctively.

Taking apart an entire moose was hard work, made more difficult by their tools - kunai and San's bone knife.

"Just use your teeth. You have them for a reason, don't you?"

Teeth were for eating. Gaara wasn't eating raw moose.

A snort. "Who says you can't? It's a delicacy. You have a little pointed tooth for tearing meat - you should use it."

Gaara considered the band of muscle he was working to pull free from the left flank. Carefully, he leaned down and sank his teeth into the top of the muscle, braced against the bulk of the carcass, and jerked his head to the side, ripping it free.

He unlocked his jaw and let the meat flop free. He glanced up to see Hinata watching with wide eyes and Sai with an almost-frown.

"I scared her again," Gaara complained.

An amused satisfaction. "Well, you do have blood smeared all over your face."

Gaara licked his lips absently, chasing the metallic taste with his tongue.

"That is not healthy for ningen ," said San severely. "Like elk, moose meat also has tiny animals that make you sick if you eat without freezing or cooking first."

"You are not just ningen," Gaara was reassured. "I will burn out the bacteria and viruses."

Reluctantly, Gaara reverted to his kunai. He liked Hinata, but there was a difference between quiet and lets him do what he wants and silent and terrified and useless in the field .

"Dinner!" Sakura's shrill yell cut through his concentration. Gaara blinked up at the sky, now shot through with gold and grey.

San caught his look but made no move to get up. "You think you can eat when you are not even halfway through? No, you will eat when you are finished."

"That bitch!"

Gaara flinched from the sudden onslaught of rage, but glowered at San nonetheless. She regarded him with the same flat stare. "You will not disobey me on this. You are on narrow ice already. Or did you think your sensei did not tell me what your team did?"

A snarl. "She does not command us. I demand her blood for her insolence!"

Gaara growled agreement, but caught a glimpse of Hinata's pale face out of the corner of his eye. "No," he grumbled. "We don't need to eat yet."

"We'll save some for you," said Nee-chan, leaning down to ruffle his hair before heading back for the main camp with Neji.

As the darkness encroached, Sai ringed the carcass with torches under San's watchful eye. But as the darkness grew stronger, so did the cold.

Gaara flipped the hood of his cloak up, leaving slimy fingerprints in the fur lining. The meat froze beneath his fingers as he worked to pry it away muscle by muscle. Senses clogged by blood-scent, he didn't notice Shisui-sensei's arrival.

"Shisui," San greeted, and Gaara glanced up to see the teen settle next to her, his back not quite touching Yuuki. He waved his fingers at Gaara in a salute.

"I see our little rulebreakers are hard at work," he said to San, and Gaara scowled, stabbing viciously through tissue and tendon. "I suppose it will free up Itachi to train his brother's team while Zabuza's still out."

"I do not understand why you do not just starve them for a week or two," returned San placidly. "That is how I was raised."

"Well, we're trying to minimize the child endangerment here," said Shisui-sensei. "And I don't think it's as severe a punishment for wolves since humans eat two to three times a day while wolves eat like once a week."

"Hm," said San thoughtfully. Yuuki chuffed a laugh. "So instead, you deprive them of fighting?"

"Well," said Shisui-sensei. "Yes?"

"It's a stupid punishment." A resentful growl.

It was effective, though. A month off of hunting duties was not worth a week of confinement. Gaara would go for a rabbit next time and let the moose get away. He glared down at the meat in his hand and ripped it bodily away from the bone. At least with a rabbit he wouldn't be stripping it down six hours after the kill. He would be sitting in his nice, warm bunk, watching the others sleep.

Beside him, Hinata hopped over the ribcage with an armload of meat. The moose was mostly skeletal, now, clean white shining through the scraps of meat clinging stubbornly to bone.

"Enough," San announced. "You may move the bones to the cold storage for the wolves. We are finished here." She stretched languidly and rose to make her way back towards the main hollow.

"Good work with this," said Shisui-sensei. "Next time just stay in her territory, hm? I think Temari's saved some meat for you, once you've washed up."

Mmm. Another reason why Nee-chan was his favorite.

Day one of confinement was incredibly boring. Naruto's team took off with his sensei at dawn, leaving Gaara to glare impotently after them until Temari, on her way out with Neji and Shisui-sensei, ruffled his hair. Gaara paced like a caged coyote, snarling impotently at the walls of the canyon.

Hinata, unperturbed, flowed through her katas around the ashy remains of the cooking fire and Sai, who sat with a cleaning cloth and his tanto.

"Come," said Sai, at almost midmorning. "We may as well spar in the training hollow. Hinata?"

"Aa," she agreed. "I-It would be n-nice to d-do something p-productive."

Gaara whipped around, cloak billowing around him, and prowled through the narrow pass ahead of his team. He could use a good fight, even if he couldn't kill them.

"Could too kill them."

"Taijutsu only," said Sai after a pause. "Testing Itachi-sensei's rules at this time is unwise."

Ugh. Gaara wrinkled his nose. Fine, whatever. As long as he got to hit something. He dropped his satchel of sand at the roots of a tree and whirled. "Let's go," he growled impatiently.

"Begin," said Sai, and turned neatly on his heel as Gaara lunged past. Snow went flying in all directions as he landed in a crouch. Hinata darted into the fray, cloak whipping behind her.

Gaara may unquestionably be a predator, and Sai both fast and strong, but in terms of taijutsu, even without her genkai kekkei, Hinata outclassed them both easily.

She caught Sai as he dodged, brushing aside his punch and landing an open-palm strike on his chest. She pursued as he gave ground, only hopping backwards when he spun around in a kick.

Gaara charged before Sai could recover, swinging for his head, but Sai brought his arm up, barely in time to block, and ducked his follow-up. Before Gaara could continue his offensive, his senses blared a warning, and he whipped around in time for Hinata's hand to glance off his arm in a spray of sand.

"No sand," Sai warned, even as he darted past after Hinata's retreat. "Thirty second timeout!"

Gaara bared his teeth. "Stay down!" he growled impotently at his sand, pacing just out of range as Hinata and Sai exchanged blows, sending up sprays of snow.

A snort. "You can't just turn off an automatic defense, no matter how badly your sensei wants you to."

Gaara launched himself back into the battle with a roundhouse kick just as Hinata knocked Sai's legs out from under him, forcing her to twist away. She landed and struck in a single movement, lightning fast, and Gaara tripped backwards, rolling to his feet as Sai surged past. His jab was brushed aside with almost careless ease, and Hinata spun to land a kick on his unprotected side. She ducked as Gaara pounced, and he sailed over her, twisting just enough that her hand just barely brushed his leg instead of landing a solid hit.

For a moment, the three eyed each other cautiously, chests heaving with exertion. Sai shook the half-melted snow out of his hair.

Gaara charged.

Hinata's eyes narrowed as she flipped neatly out of the way, but Sai was on her in a heartbeat with a spinning kick she blocked midair.

Gaara lashed out as she landed, and although she twisted out of the way, it gave Sai the opening he needed to land a hit hard enough to shove her back a couple meters.

Gaara pounced after her, but was forced to veer out of the way when Sai launched a kick in his direction.

"Hey, pups! Small ningen !"

Gaara flinched mid-lunge and skidded through the snow. Sai aborted an aerial attack. Hinata whipped around fast enough to send snow slush flying.

Leaning atop Chie's head, San eyed the trio with amusement. "You have unfinished work," she informed them. "You will have new clothes, but first you treat the pelt."

The team blinked at each other bemusedly.

"The moose," San prodded. "The hide. Leather. Very simple. Long process. Come along."

"Very well," said Sai. "I suppose that since it will take a while, we should begin with the leather immediately - "

"Tools first," corrected San. "We will make tools from the bones."

"Tools," Sai amended. "Then leather."

Gaara scowled. He wanted to keep trying to hit people.

"Just hit them, then. They're not even paying attention."

One moose could have twenty kilograms of antler. Twenty kilograms of antler could make a lot of knives. And hide scrapers. But mostly knives, because that's what San liked, and Gaara was okay with that because he liked them too.

By the time the hide was soaking in brain, Gaara had the makings of two full tangs, and from the commotion in the main hollow, both teams were back.

When his team wandered back in, there was a small upheaval of ninken, and at its center, the captain. Naruto's sensei skulked in the shadows, Haku by his side.

There was also Gaara's sensei.

Gaara narrowed his eyes, not quite having forgiven him.

"Just kill him, already."

Maybe not that annoyed with him, though, since he taught Gaara how to hit people.

"Why do I even try with you?"

"Gaara!" Naruto beamed. Most of them walked on top of the snow, since doing so with chakra was even easier than wall-walking, but Naruto hadn't mastered even that and so slogged through the mess like a civilian. "Your sensei is totally awesome! I mean, even though he's Sasuke's brother and Sasuke's like, the worst - "

"Hey, watch it," Sasuke snapped.

" - Itachi-sensei knows so much and he doesn't make us run pointless laps like Zabuza-baka-sensei does - "

"Five laps, right now, for disrespect, Chikuwa!" aforementioned sensei hollered across the hollow.

"It's Naruto!" the blond screeched even as he took off, leaving Gaara blinked bemusedly behind him.

This also left Gaara with Sasuke. The other boy jerked his head at the fire. "Food?" he offered. "We made crow stew."

" - and he helped me fix my taijutsu! And he didn't - !" yelled Naruto as he thundered past.

"Aa," said Gaara. His stomach was hollow and his fingers half-frozen. Stew would fix that.

A hand ruffled through his hair. Gaara twisted around in time to see Temari-nee's smile. "Hey, otouto," she greeted warmly. "How was your day."

Gaara glanced at the bowl of soup, the half-finished bone knives in his holster, and Naruto still plowing his way through his laps. "Acceptable," he said.

She beamed back at him. "That's good," she said cheerfully. There was a smear of dirt on her cheek and melting snow in her hair and hood.

Gaara leaned into her, and wrapped in his cloak, let his attention drift.

Gaara wasn't entirely sure what happened.

It was day four of camp confinement. Itachi-sensei had declared a three-on-one sparring match in the training hollow, but remaining infuriatingly out of reach the entire time and the roiling rage in the back of Gaara's mind had swelled and swelled and -

On second thought, that was probably what caused it. But in his defense, Gaara couldn't really think, not when he was on his knees in the snow with both hands clamped around his head to ward off the thrum of agony and bloodlust.

Between the rasping of his own breath, he could hear Hinata murmuring something too quietly for him to hear. He bared his teeth.

"Stand back," he heard Itachi-sensei order.

A bolt of white-hot pain stabbed him through the temple, and he flinched.

"He dares mock us! Kill him!"

The snarl echoed through his head, and for a moment, all he could hear was the throb of his own heart. He clutched his ears futilely.

"Stop," he growled, fighting down the wave of sand that swirled up around him.

"Gaara?" Itachi-sensei's normally-calm voice sharpened.

Gaara opened his mouth to respond, but another jolt of pain whited out his vision and he let out a pained whine.

"Gaara," Itachi-sensei repeated insistently.

"When Gaara loses control of his bloodlust, only a kill will stop the sand," he heard Sai say urgently, as if from a distance. "Generally, he - "

And the rest was drowned out by an enraged roar of, "I said, kill him !"

Gaara shrieked as the sand overwhelmed him, crawling over his body and enveloping his mind in a bloody mist.

The panic vanished in an instant, replaced by an all-encompassing rage. How dare this mortal, this ant to tell them what to do? To think he could evade death at the hands of one like them?

Their mind was clear now. Yes, only this mortal's death would appease them now.

Gaara felt themself swell as the sand answered their call, slithering up from beneath the snow and dirt and raising them up and enveloping them in a snug armor. They surveyed the area with golden eyes.

There was the one called Itachi, standing fearless before him, eyes spinning red and fierce. Gaara would teach him fear.

The sand answered their call, slamming black-tipped claws through the shinobi, but as soon as the sand touched him he turned to shadows, winging away with hoarse cries. Gaara snarled, whirling around.

But why did he want to kill Itachi-sensei anyways? He liked Itachi-sensei.

No, they didn't. Itachi was a puny mortal with hateful eyes and Gaara would smash him into pulp when they caught him.

A plume of fire blasted them from the side, but no mortal flame would penetrate their armor. Gaara lashed their tail, but Itachi leapt, twisting gracefully out of the way of their sand, and launched a wave of kunai. They clattered uselessly against the sand that rose to block them, but when they waved the sand away, Itachi was gone.

No matter. The mortal could not outrun them forever. And when they caught him, his blood would be sweet-salty - they could smell it. They licked their lips.

There! Gaara shot out a claw, swiped it through the snow as the little shinobi darted about. But again, he was too fast and flitted out of reach. A barrage of shuriken pinged off their shield like rain.

They whipped around and lunged, and a little tuft of silver-grey slipped out of reach. Two of them! They launched spines of sand, peppering the snow, but Kakashi remained infuriatingly out of reach.

"We have a seal," said Kakashi, as Itachi appeared in a crouch at his side, and Gaara growled. They hated seals! Hated, hated, hated!

But why did they hate seals? Seals didn't do anything to them.

"...developed for the incomplete Kyuubi, but should work well enough here," Kakashi was saying.

Not if Gaara killed them first! They lashed out with a clawed paw, and the two little blurs scattered. But when Gaara turned around, the shinobi had multiplied.

"That is one ugly motherfucker," muttered Zabuza.

Gaara was not ugly! Gaara was beautiful and special. Nee-chan said so.

Nee-chan? Gaara paused thoughtfully. Nee-chan wouldn't want him to kill their sensei.

"What's the plan here?" asked Shisui.

Gaara couldn't let them make a plan! They would lock Gaara away because they were afraid of them, and rightly so! Gaara would crush them all into a pulp.

They slammed both paws into the ground, and from either side of the little huddle of shinobi a wave of sand erupted from the snow. They darted away like little flies, and Gaara batted at them, snarling.

Something rammed into their back. Gaara turned with a roar, flailing as Zabuza cursed and leapt away, leaving behind his sword. Gaara flung it across the hollow, and Itachi ducked as it flew over his head.

The screaming of a thousand birds. Gaara whipped around as Kakashi charged with a fistful of lightning. Pathetic! Something so mundane could never touch -

Gaara shrieked as the shinobi crashed straight through their shield, and only a wild swipe with their tail forced Kakashi aside before his jutsu could do more damage than carve a wide gouge in their armor.

More sand. They needed more sand! The earth rumbled as the sand answered their call. Gaara glared around the clearing. Zabuza and Itachi hovered at healthy distances, but Kakashi and Shisui huddled next to the river, muttering urgently.

Sitting out in the open so arrogantly! That would not do. Gaara would have to kill them for that. They shot out a clawed paw, and beneath the shinobi erupted a geyser of sand, boiling up from the snow. They swatted at the little shadow that darted away and -

"Sorry about this, Gaara-kun," said Shisui.

Gaara whipped around too late and Shisui slapped a paper seal on their forehead.

The world went dim and muted. Gaara stared woozily at the blurry sky. Little dots of snow fluttered down. One landed on his nose, and he went cross-eyed looking at it. A chill wind blew the flaps of his cloak up, and he shivered.

"Gaara-kun?" Shisui-sensei's face swam into his field of vision, and Gaara blinked bemusedly up at him. "How are you feeling?"

Gaara thought. It was quiet - almost too quiet. There was no rumbling of bloodlust at the back of his mind, no omnipresent fury. He swayed on his feet, and the familiar shifting at his feet prompted him to look down.

He was standing on a veritable mountain of sand, far more than fit into his knapsack. He shifted his feet, and the sand shifted as well.

Itachi-sensei, a slight frown darkening his face, stood at the base of the sand. "Gaara."

Gaara blinked at him owlishly. A few paces behind Itachi-sensei was the captain, one eye shut as he scrutinized Gaara carefully. And behind either of them, one hand resting on his sword hilt, Zabuza glowered.

He'd tried to kill them.

Gaara took a step back, but wavered on his feet as the strength abruptly left his legs. His control hadn't slipped so badly since the ambush last year.

Shisui-sensei caught him by the shoulder with one hand. He quirked a crooked smile at Gaara. "You're fine," he said. "How about we get you to your bunk, hm?"

Temari-nee met them halfway, eyes pinched as she crouched to his height. "Gaara?"

" 'm fine," he muttered.

"He's a little out of it," Shisui-sensei said over his head. "The seal cut off his connection to the Ichibi's chakra pretty abruptly."

Nee-chan's hand brushed through his hair tentatively. "Thanks, Shisui-sensei. I can take him," she said to Shisui-sensei, and towed Gaara by the wrist. Near to the fire, the Konoha kids watched as Gaara shuffled towards the sleeping quarters, tensed in a wary stillness. Gaara turned away.

"What happened, Gaara?" Nee-chan asked quietly, when it was just the two of them sitting side by side in their top-bunks. "You were doing so well."

Gaara shrugged and wrapped his cloak around him more snugly.

"Have you been talking to it again?"

"No," Gaara said defensively, curling his fingers into a loose fist.

"Gaara." Temari-nee leveled him with a significant stare.

Gaara hunched in on himself. "She always talks to me. I just tell her no, mostly," he muttered.

Nee-chan exhaled with so much disappointment Gaara half-wanted to rend the sleeping quarters apart. "We talked about this, Gaara," she said. "Remember? After it made you kill Yashamaru-oji?"

Gaara bared his teeth, but it was half-hearted. "Father made me kill Yashamaru-oji," he retorted.

"Father may be the reason we left Suna, and Father may have sent Yashamaru-oji to test you and lie to you," Temari-nee said gently, "but it was the demon that made you kill Yashamaru."

Gaara glowered at the cave wall.

Nee-chan nudged an elbow into his side. "Remember when we met Naruto for the first time?" she said with conspiratorial glint in her eyes. "This scruffy little kid with so much mud on him his skin was practically grey?"

Gaara wrinkled his nose. "He smelled gross," he complained.

"But you let him touch you and grab you and drag you off to meet his friends," countered Nee-chan. "And you said the demon wanted you to kill him, and all of them, too."

Gaara frowned. "I wouldn't," he snapped. "That would hurt Naruto and Hinata would be afraid of me again." She probably already was.

"Maybe," allowed Temari-nee, "but you can't let the demon win. You almost killed your sensei today."

Gaara's hands clenched in the folds of his cloak. "I know," he said. "It won't happen again. I won't let it."

Nee-chan reached over to cradle the back of his neck with one hand and dropped a kiss on his forehead. "I know," she said fondly. "I love you; never forget that."

Gaara leaned in, and together they watched the flickering fire outside as darkness fell.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Kakashi Mostly Keeps It Together

Let's be real, Kakashi could be a literal dumpster fire and still mostly have it together.

Notes:

Emotionally challenged men experience feelings™ and are uncomfortable with it

* * *

Chapter Text

MISSION REPORT: D-29

Continued residence in [REDACTED].

All targets baseline status. All allied combatants and noncombatants baseline status.

Operative Cat-15 experiencing sustained physical fatigue, mental stress, and depressed mood. Mental status approaching critical.

Provisions acquired on biweekly basis.

Base established in [REDACTED]. Patrols conducted five times daily at variant times. Sentry duties rotated between Operative Cat-15 and allied combatants.

Security status: low level risk due to civilian traffic in environment.

No contact with enemy combatants.

No contact with allied combatants.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

* * *

A Hatake without a pack is worse than lonely. They spiral - into depression, into obsession. Kakashi knew this. It was a reason he'd sought out the other refugees after the Fall, a reason he kept at least two of his ninken with him when he travelled.

Kakashi was dangerously close to not having a pack, but the only thing more dangerous to a Hatake than not having a pack was losing a pack. And Kakashi was not so naive to think that he could keep a pack alive in the face of war.

Pressure on his forearm. "Shiba," he said, without looking down, "what did we say about biting me?"

The ninken unclenched his jaw and swished his tail mutinously. "Don't," Shiba said mulishly. "But Pakkun said - "

"Pakkun needs to keep his nose out of other people's business," muttered Kakashi, rolling his eyes.

"He's just worried about you," Shiba said earnestly. "He's afraid you'll go crazy because of what happened to your last pack - "

"Stop talking," Akino warned, just as Kakashi growled, " Thank you, Shiba."

"Don't you know when to keep your mouth shut?" Akino groaned, baring his teeth at the younger hound. "Sorry about him, Kakashi."

Shiba tilted his head apologetically, but Kakashi waved it away and took a drink from his canteen. "Anything out there?"

"No," said Akino. "Urushi is making one last round, but it's been all clear so far. Should be a straight shot to the camp in Yu no Kuni."

"Good," said Kakashi. "We leave in ten."

When he travelled with only his ninken, Kakashi never bothered to unpack. He hooked the canteen back onto his belt and spent the remaining minutes of respite picking bits of twig out of Shiba's shaggy coat.

"You're a ninken," he muttered. "This isn't even your first life. You'd think you'd learn to keep your own fur clean."

Shiba pinned his ears back. "This is a swamp. Besides, maybe you should blame the older members of the pack for not teaching me," he pointed out cheekily.

Kakashi tapped him warningly on the nose as Akino snapped his teeth half-heartedly in Shiba's direction. "Careful," said Kakashi, amused. "The others will knock you down a peg if they hear."

"This one will knock you down a peg as soon as we return to camp," growled Akino, and Shiba widened his eyes in mock-fear.

"Clear," announced Urushi, prowling into the clearing. "There are small clusters of shinobi to the south, but as long as we move quickly and discreetly we should slip straight past them."

Kakashi tossed aside one last twig into the mud. "Good. Urushi, take a break and catch up to us. Akino, take point; I'll watch rear until Urushi catches up."

Urushi nodded gravely, and Akino disappeared into the marshland in a flash of white-brown-grey fur. Kakashi leapt after him, stretching out his senses as far as they would go as he ran. The muted blurs of chakra of his ninken bobbed alongside him, and further out, a little group of unrefined chakra. He inhaled, and even through the mask, he could scent the herd of deer scores of kilometers out.

A hundred kilometers flew under their feet before Shiba's ears pricked and Akino's swivelled.

"Kakashi," Urushi growled from behind him.

"I know," said Kakashi, glancing off to the side with a narrowed eye. Three shinobi, closing fast on an intercept course. "Let's move faster, hope they're not out to get us specifically."

Their easy lope picked up into a dead run as they flew across the swampland, but even then, Kakashi heard the shinobi change course to pursue.

"Might have tripped something back there," Akino muttered. "All these factions running around Oto trying to kill each other."

"Hm," Kakashi said consideringly. "We'll have to take care of this quickly."

"And quietly?" asked Shiba doubtfully.

"Of course quietly," Akino growled. "Kakashi?"

"Urushi and Akino, stay behind and flank them when they're close," Kakashi ordered. "Shiba, with me."

The two bigger ninken peeled off immediately, melting back into the shadows. Kakashi slowed his pace almost imperceptibly, bounding from muddy island to muddy island.

Shiba barked sharply, and Kakashi dove, twisting off a patch of mud onto the surface of the murky water in a spray of droplets to avoid the barrage of kunai that hurtled through the space where he'd been. In one smooth movement, he unsheathed his katana and slashed a second flurry out of the air, then twisted the blade sharply to slice the wire that was about halfway to encircling his torso. "I can smell you," he murmured absently, landing in a ready crouch atop the water with his blade swept behind him.

The first shinobi, built like a bruiser, crashed out of the bushes and charged, a well-used battleaxe halfway through a crushing swing. He was promptly tackled out of the way by a snarling Akino, the blue-eyed ninken's ruff bristling as he wrestled the attacker to the muddy ground.

"Shit!" the man yelped in an amusingly high-pitched voice, as Shiba sank sharp fangs into his dominant wrist and wrenched.

A piercing screech rent the air, far too loud and high pitched to be caused by natural means, and the ninken let go with pained whines, leaping free. Kakashi gritted his teeth. "Kai," he snapped, sending his chakra out in a small, controlled burst.

A second shinobi slunk out of the marsh with a snicker as his companion hauled himself upright unsteadily, clutching at his mangled hand. "It's not a genjutsu," he explained smugly. "It's a ninjutsu. And you can't stop it."

Another shriek. Kakashi jerked his head to the side involuntarily as it hammered into his ears. Urushi bared his teeth, ears flat against his skull, as Shiba whimpered, crouching lower to the ground.

The shinobi Akino had mauled lunged at Kakashi, and again, Shiba darted forward in a flash, bringing him down by the ankle. Akino sprang as well, intercepting the man's other arm before he could bring his axe down.

Kakashi pounced at the other shinobi, who whipped out a kunai from either sleeve and hurled them at him. He deflected both off his blade, and gave chase.

A third screech. Kakashi clamped both hands over his ears, giving ground rapidly, and both Akino and Shiba tumbled away from their target in a flurry of muddy fur, ears flattened.

Kakashi's opponent seized the opening and pounced, pinning Kakashi against a gnarled tree. Kakashi dropped his sword, grabbing the man's wrists with both hands as the other shinobi bore down with a pair of kunai.

The screech cut off abruptly with an audible crunch. Both Oto shinobi flinched, whipping around with wide eyes.

"Maa," said Kakashi faux-sympathetically. "Urushi has a bit of a short temper. Sounds like you might need a new ninjutsu expert."

Kakashi's opponent turned back around with a sneer, increasing the pressure until his blades were practically touching Kakashi's throat. "So, what clan are you?" The man mused conversationally, narrowing cold eyes. "You're about to join my teammate in hell, and I need to know what name to add to my kill list. Inuhara? Inutama?"

"Hatake, actually," Kakashi said, tilting his head up, and had the pleasure of watching the blood drain from the shinobi's face as he opened his eye.

"Kakashi," said Shiba conversationally, "do you maybe think you're getting a little too well-known?"

Kakashi dropped the body with a thump. "I'm in pretty much every bingo book printed since I was ten," he pointed out. "Konoha made sure I would be well known. That's why I wear this." He tapped the battered porcelain of his full-face mask.

"No, but like - " He prodded the mangled body of the shinobi he and Akino had taken down with a mud-splattered paw. "These guys were chuunin level, probably, and as soon as he heard your name he tried to run."

Kakashi shrugged. "The rest of his team was already dead. He just wanted to cut his losses."

Urushi dragged the limp body of the third from the bushes and dropped it, baring bloody teeth. "Shiba, clean up the trail, would you?" he rasped, jerking his head back to where he'd come from. "My ears are still ringing."

"I hate Oto," Shiba complained, but went.

Kakashi spat a flame that set the bodies alight despite the damp seeping in from the bog. "Keep watch, Akino," he ordered absently, wiping down his katana. "If their faction comes looking for them before we're out of here, we're in trouble."

The ninken growled agreement, slinking back into the marsh as the fire ate away the corpses into ash. With a perfunctory douton, Kakashi buried what remained.

"Let's go," he called, and his ninken darted out of the shadows and onwards.

They crossed the border without incident, and about fifty kilometers inside the border, Kakashi angled them south. Swamp-slush thankfully morphed into solid ground, damp and pocketmarked from hail or hard rain. He picked up the pace and angled for the hills.

Just after dawn, he slowed to a stop at a narrow valley nestled in the hills. At the far end, hidden in a grove of low-growing trees, was a little hamlet.

Mist clung to the outside of his mask and collected in the eyeholes. "Let's take this slow, boys," he murmured. "Shiba, advance. Urushi, sweep behind us. Akino, sentry."

An hour-long sweep revealed no followers. Ninken at his heels, Kakashi approached the settlement, exchanging a nod with the sentry crouched in one of the larger trees.

At a small house no different than the ones around it, Kakashi tapped lightly on the door. After a moment's pause, it swung open.

"Oh," she said, biting at her lip absently. "I'm sorry - she's not having a good day."

"I'd like to see her anyways, if that's alright," said Kakashi, hooking his mask to his belt. Shiba wiggled past his legs and nosed up to her, tail wagging madly. "Maa," Kakashi admonished, and the excitable ninken backed up a step.

"It's fine," she reassured. "I can get them something to eat and drink while you're in there."

"Thank you," said Kakashi, and watched as all three ninken filed after her into the kitchen. He glanced down at his pants, lightly flecked with mud, then shrugged mentally before knocking on the bedroom door. There was no answer, but he hadn't been expecting one.

He let himself in and shut the door behind him. The room was dim and still. Faint shadows yawned from the far corners, and a slight chill emanated from the open window. A tray with a bowl of rice, a plate of fish, and a bowl of soup gone cold sat on the bedside table. The sheets on the bed were folded in with clean, sharp corners, but the room's sole occupant sat hunched and motionless in a worn armchair carefully angled towards the window.

"Hime," said Kakashi, but Tsunade did not so much as twitch.

Kakashi stepped over carefully until he was standing next to her, in front of the window. "I'm sure you'll be happy to know that the kids are doing well," he said quietly. "They're learning so quickly. Well - Naruto's almost got the hang of walking on top of the snow, but he seems to find tree-walking easier. He's going to be a bulldozer on the battlefield."

He glanced over, but Tsunade's vacant stare still fixated on something far beyond what was outside her window. "Gaara had a little incident last week," he admitted. "He lost control of the Ichibi. We used the experimental seal for the Kyuubi on him, and it worked, but his control over his sand is improving. He's been confined to camp for the past week and a half, so he's going a little stir-crazy."

He paused to push back his hood and slide down the bandana that covered his hair to hang around his neck. "Shisui has good things to say about Temari - that's the Kazekage's girl - and Momochi's little Hyoton user is faster than ever. The Hyuuga heiress is growing up well too; Hiashi-sama should be proud. You should see her fight, Hime - she's not the best fighter, but she has grace and resolve. And the civilian girl is a little spitfire. She's got both the boys under her thumb, and her chakra control is prodigious."

But Tsunade sat, blinking but unseeing, until the sun's rays streamed brightly into the window and Kakashi ran out of words. He sighed, soft and tired. "I'll see you later, Tsunade-hime," he said quietly, and took the untouched food tray with him as he left.

Shizune had evidently not only fed and watered his ninken, she'd given them baths. Shiba's silky coat was again clean and golden, and his underside snowy white, as were Akino's paws. The mud was out of Urushi's coat, and the wolflike ninken curled in a loose circle around Tonton, with one massive paw under the pig's chin. Shiba, unsurprisingly, was sprawled shamelessly on his back as Shizune ran her fingers through his fur with one hand, most of her attention on the book in her hand. She glanced up as Kakashi emerged.

Kakashi shook his head, and Shizune's face fell - though she covered it as best she could. She sighed. "She woke up all right this morning, but when I went to grab her breakfast - " she broke off, pressing her lips together.

"Any progress on a cure?" Kakashi asked, settling on the couch. Akino shifted to give him more room, resting his jaw on his leg. Kakashi brushed a hand over the ninken's head absentmindedly.

"Exposure therapy may have worked on her hemophobia, but post traumatic stress disorder, depression, schizophrenia - these aren't things that can just be cured," Shizune said, frowning. "They're diseases and disorders of the mind, and the brain is incredibly complex and delicate. At best we can work on treatments, but the only iryo-nin qualified enough to perform such operations is, well - " she gestured at Tsunade's bedroom, " - her."

Kakashi exhaled.

"I made lunch," offered Shizune. "The commander will want to see you, I think."

"Aa," Kakashi acquiesced with a nod. "I'll drop in on him after. Thank you."

As his pack third - after Pakkun - Akino padded at his side when Kakashi ducked out of Shizune and Tsunade's house after a simple, homemade meal. "Slug-witch-princess is not a strong leader like this," the hound warned. "A pack will not follow her unless she is strong."

"Human speech while we're here, Akino," Kakashi reminded absently. "Tsunade-hime's strength is recognized everywhere in the Elemental Lands. And she is improving - her catatonia doesn't last more than a day. She'll be ready for the meeting tomorrow."

Akino tilted his head to eye Kakashi. "You heard Poison-night-springs - "

"Shizune."

" - there is no cure. Are you sure you're not clinging to the woman she used to be?"

Kakashi narrowed his eye at Akino until the ninken looked away. "I'm sure. And human speech, I said." He came to a stop outside yet another identical house and rapped on the door. "Commander," he greeted dryly when it swung open.

Shikaku rolled his eyes. "Commander," he drawled. "Akino." He held the door open as they filed in.

The inside of the house was simultaneously sparse and cluttered. Little piles of books and weapons were stacked haphazardly on shelves and chairs, but the floors and other furniture were bare. The dining table - generally empty in Tsunade's house - was dominated by a large map with little colored pebbles scattered along its surface.

Kakashi scooted a stack of books off a chair so Akino could jump up and scrutinize the map, bracing his front paws delicately at the table's edge. "Any big changes?"

Shikaku let out a short sigh, scrubbing a hand over the top of his head. "You mean apart from the doomsday parley with the Bloody Mist insurgents? No. Konoha and Kumo are still doing their back-and-forth, but nothing serious yet - last week, a Kumo team chased a Konoha team through half of Yu no Kuni a two hundred and thirty meters southwest, but they were both moving fast and by all appearances focused on each other. We have rumors Kumo will try to make an incursion through Nami, since the other option is marching an army overland through two minor countries, but that would have to wait until the ice melts."

"No," Kakashi said absently. "A wouldn't trust his shinobi to a wooden ship. Subtlety is not his strong suit, not when hostilities have dragged out for over two years."

"Exactly," Shikaku agreed. "The position of this base is becoming precarious. Both sides will begin sending scouts, if they haven't begun already."

Kakashi grimaced. "If the meeting goes well, it's this or mobilizing to Uzushio. We don't have a lot of options."

"If we mobilize, there's only Uzushio," the older shinobi countered. "That kind of activity won't go unnoticed if Konoha and Kumo escalate."

"You need to think about Kiri too," Akino pointed out gruffly, the syllables falling awkwardly from his mouth.

Kakashi rubbed his chin absently. "If this is going to work, then the insurgents need control of the Yu-Uzushio strait. Right now, Kirigakure doesn't have the manpower to crush a significant shinobi force on that island."

"Well, we'll figure that out tomorrow," grumbled Shikaku, glaring at the table with folded arms. "Any news from the recruiting effort?"

"Momochi pulled a couple of chuunin out of a tight spot in Kawa. Both of them are in the Konoha bingo book; apparently they defected two months ago, and Konoha sent a hunter-nin squad after them," said Kakashi. "He dropped them in with a cluster in Kusa, and we're pretty sure they'll join up."

"Okay," Shikaku muttered, tugging a book out of the stack Kakashi had relocated. "We'll add them to the tally. Type?"

"One taijutsu and weapons specialist, one genjutsu specialist," answered Kakashi. He hesitated. "And...add eight genin to the count."

Shikaku's pen stopped moving.

Akino dropped both paws from the edge of the table.

"Kakashi," said Shikaku disapprovingly. "Don't tell me these are the Lost Four and company."

"Well," Kakashi hedged. "Technically, we only have three of them since Cat-15 and Hyuuga Hanabi are still in the wind - "

Shikaku slapped a hand over his face and sighed heavily. "They're barely trained. There's no need to throw them into the first war that comes along."

"So we keep them out of the fighting," Kakashi argued. "Support only. You know we need the numbers to pull this off."

"You can't guarantee the fighting won't reach them," Shikaku warned, but went back to scratching in his book. "Seventeen percent of C-ranked missions escalate to genin fatalities, and that's during peacetime."

"I would say two of the teams are easily genin-level already," mused Kakashi, tapping his fingers over his cloth mask. "They lack experience, but I'm confident they'll be able to defend themselves well."

"We would still have to pull a jounin or two off the front lines to guard them." Shikaku frowned. "But that would only heighten suspicion; if their identities are discovered, we lose a tactical advantage."

"My team will rotate as necessary," Kakashi offered. "And Shisui won't be on the front lines, in any case."

Shikaku eyed him knowingly. "Does Shisui know this?"

Kakashi grimaced. "Shisui hasn't been active in the field since two years before the Fall, not since Orochimaru kidnapped him. His recovery's been long, but he's still not back to a hundred percent."

"He'll never be a hundred percent," Shikaku pointed out reasonably. "He's missing an eye. But if he's battle-ready, his talents are invaluable."

"He's ready," Akino rasped suddenly. "The rest of the pack has seen him train. His mind is all that is holding him back."

"That could get him killed during a mission," argued Kakashi. "War is back-to-back action. We can't put him through that kind of strain right away."

Shikaku grunted. "Fine, we'll keep him on the Lost Four guard for now," he agreed reluctantly. "I don't know that we could spare you or Itachi to it anyways." He scribbled absently in his book. "What about Momochi? He ready to come clean?"

Kakashi snorted. "He better be," he said. "He can't hide his association with Hana-ha forever if we ally with the Mist insurgents."

"You would think it would benefit us, bringing Momochi to the bargaining table," Shikaku muttered distractedly, "since his information allowed us to make contact. What is he hiding? Or, what is he hiding from? So troublesome."

"I do trust him," Kakashi said mildly.

"I know." Shikaku waved a hand distractedly. "Just thinking. Have you heard back from Operative 31?"

Kakashi glanced at Akino, who shook his head. He frowned. "I'll have Itachi send a crow, but slipping into Konoha unnoticed takes time."

"Keep me updated," said Shikaku, and made one last note in his book before setting it down. He sighed, surveying the map with crossed arms. "That's it for today, I guess. Sake?"

"Sake," Kakashi agreed, and ignored Akino's disapproving blue glare.

Sometime before dawn, a cold ninken nose bumping Kakashi's hand woke him from a light doze. He blinked up at Urushi, who leaned over him and his bedroll.

The big ninken snorted. "Akino is on watch," he informed Kakashi gruffly. "...you smell."

Kakashi grunted and went to borrow Shikaku's shower.

As the water soaked through his hair, Kakashi scrubbed futilely at his battered mask. It hadn't been his, in Anbu - he'd stolen it right off the face of one of his pursuers in the first few months after the Fall, so it was one of the generic cat-faces. Now, it was scratched and blood-stained, the paint over the right eye scorched almost completely off by a katon he hadn't dodged in time.

He shut the water off and slipped into his old Anbu blacks, faded enough that the stains splattered over the fabric were beginning to show. He strapped on the vambraces, years beyond when they should have been retired and recycled. He didn't look in the mirror; he already knew he would see.

Shikaku gave him a critical once-over as he exited the bathroom. "You look like shit," he offered charitably.

Kakashi hooked the porcelain mask to his belt and eyed the older shinobi's worn jounin commander flak vest. "Look who's talking," he retorted. "You look like you lost a fight with a squirrel."

Shikaku rolled his eyes and tossed a bundle of grey-white fabric at him. "If all goes to plan, we'll have a bigger budget for equipment after today."

"You mean a budget?" said Kakashi dryly, slinging the cloak over his shoulders. "Let's go."

Simple as the houses in the village of Kiso-cho in Yu no Kuni may be, they had, as expected of a ninja village, excellent soundproofing. This meant that Kakashi and Shikaku heard nothing right up until they opened the front door to Tsunade's house and were greeted by Tsunade's deafening roar of, "Shizune!" followed by the harried jounin herself sprinting past the doorway, a bundle of green cloth in her arms.

Shikaku winced, shutting the door behind Urushi. The ninken slunk to the unhappy huddle of Shiba, Akino, and Tonton in the corner, and Kakashi regretted he could not join them.

"Ah," said Kakashi, "maybe the ninken and I could scout out - "

Shikaku snagged the back of his cloak before he could make his getaway. "I suffer, you suffer," he hissed, narrowing his eyes at Kakashi.

Tsunade stormed out of her room, her haori now flying around her. Though her cheekbones stood out sharply on her face, she looked healthy and vibrant, nothing like the silent husk of the day before. "Hatake!" she bellowed, and Kakashi felt himself snap to attention. "Updates; the short version."

"An additional two chuunin and eight genin added to the roster," Kakashi reported.

Tsunade stopped short. "Eight genin?" she demanded, levelling him with a severe glare. "I hope you know what you're doing."

Kakashi suppressed the urge to wince. "Yes, ma'am," he said.

She snorted. "Fine," she snapped, whirling. "Shikaku, put that cloak on. Shizune! My pig!"

The meeting point was not a hundred kilometers to the east - an easy run. Kakashi inhaled, letting the scents around him wash over him.

The tiny farmstead - long abandoned - sat at the center of overgrown fields. From the lip of the valley, just beyond the fringe of trees, Tsunade surveyed the rendezvous with hands on her hips. "Shiranui," she barked.

Genma dropped lightly out of the tree beside the squad. "No sign," he said. "It's clear."

"Good," said Tsunade. "Shizune, Tonton stay back with the guards. Hatake, Nara, with me. Assorted ninken - " Shiba perked up, wagging his tail eagerly as Tsunade pursed her lips. " - on guard. Hatake?"

"Shiba, in the treeline. Akino and Urushi, in the fields," Kakashi directed.

Tsunade jerked her head, and the three advanced to the house.

Its walls were built to last - white stone worn down by the elements - but the frame and roof were wooden, half rotten away. Kakashi followed as Tsunade stepped uncaringly past the dirt and debris littered on the floor and sat down at the dilapidated table. With a glance at Shikaku, Kakashi took up position at her shoulder, the older shinobi at her other side.

Shiba's chakra pulsed once. None of them moved.

The door opened. A figure entered, a blue-grey cloak draped over their shoulders, and like Kakashi and Shikaku, a hood over their head and a porcelain mask over their face. This was quickly followed by a second figure with a slighter build. The first tilted their head, and the third figure stepped delicately through the doorway.

"Mei," Tsunade greeted curtly. "You look good."

"Tsunade-sama, a pleasure as always," Mei purred, stalking gracefully to the table. Her bodyguards ghosted up to take their posts behind her as she lowered herself carefully into the chair. "Now - we have considered your proposal. Have you any adjustments to make before we finalize the alliance?"

"We'll raise our total by two chuunin and eight genin," Tsunade responded smoothly.

One delicate eyebrow rose. "Eight genin? My, I hope they know how to water-walk." Mei folded her hands delicately. "Very well. We will match you shinobi for shinobi, three for every two who falls in battle. A war for a war."

For a brief moment, Tsunade was silent. "A war for a war," she agreed gravely, and reached across the table to shake Mei's hand.

Kakashi slid a scroll and brush out of his sleeve, handing the contract over for both to sign. Tsunade scribbled her signature perfunctorily, but Mei took long minutes to scrutinize the document before signing, which she did with a flourish. Tsunade passed the scroll back over her shoulder to Kakashi, who slipped it back up his sleeve.

"Now," Mei said brightly. "Perhaps we could dispense with the formalities and the secrecy, now that we're officially allies?"

Tsunade snorted. "After you," she shot back.

"But of course." Mei snapped her fingers at her two guards.

They unsubtly exchanged uncertain glances, but obediently threw back their hoods. The slight figure took off their mask first, revealing the face of a young woman with hard eyes. The other hesitated just long enough for Mei to level him with a glare before taking off his mask.

Beneath his own mask, Kakashi's eyes narrowed.

"Fukaya Maiko, former Anbu captain," Mei announced, "and my second, Senzaki Ao, former hunter-nin."

Tsunade's hand tightened into a loose fist. "You have a lot of nerve," she growled, "bringing him to a meeting with Konoha shinobi."

"But you are not Konoha shinobi," Mei pointed out, still draped in her chair with languid grace. "You're Hanabi-ha, and Ao is not only my right-hand man, but my best sensor."

"We are Konoha," Tsunade snapped. "And we do not appreciate that this man has stolen the eye out of a dead comrade's head."

"Your comrade should appreciate that we are shinobi," Mei shot back, "and as shinobi, our alliances change."

For a few tense seconds, both women glared at each other with killing intent held just barely at bay, and chakra crackling just under their skin. Kakashi shifted his weight subtly, but after a moment, they both relaxed. Tsunade glanced over her shoulder and waved a hand at them.

Kakashi grimaced and took off the Anbu mask, sweeping back his hood in one movement. With a little more satisfaction than was probably considered decent, he took in the widened eyes of all three Kiri insurgents.

"My second, Hatake Kakashi, former Anbu captain and commander," Tsunade drawled with just a hint of smugness, "and Nara Shikaku, former jounin commander."

"Reiketsu Kakashi," Mei purred at last, rolling his name in her mouth. "Cold-blooded Kakashi. Wanted for collusion with Kumogakure in the assassination of the Sandaime Hokage, and Nara Shikaku - "

"Framed," Kakashi interrupted, and ignored the way Ao stiffened across from him - likely for his perceived disrespect.

Mei hummed. "Konoha must really be doing something wrong," she mused, tapping long fingers against the splintering surface of the table, "to drive away not only all three of her Sannin, but her Anbu commander and her jounin commander."

Tsunade huffed. "No kidding," she muttered bitterly. "Their identities - and those of all under my command - do not leave this room," she warned. "Danzo cannot know of our involvement."

Ao and Maiko exchanged glances, but Mei merely nodded. "Anything else on the agenda, or…?"

"No," said Tsunade. "We're done for today."

The corners of Mei's lips curled in a smile, and her eyes lingered just a little longer on Kakashi's half-masked face. "We will be in touch, for the logistics," she promised, and with a swish of her battle dress, swept over the debris and out the door. Ao trailed her out, and with a last grim glance at the Hana-ha shinobi, Maiko did as well.

After a moment, Shiba's chakra pulsed once.

"Shikaku! Tell me we're working on logistics," Tsunade snapped as she pushed back her chair and made a beeline for the door.

"We are, Tsunade-sama," Shikaku answered hurriedly. "We've made lists of equipment we need to procure, including weapons and war rations. We're making arrangements to translocate the main Yu bases further south until we have confirmation of a secure channel to Uzushio, and then whichever islands the Kiri insurgents hold. We're working on the timeline to the first major assault in six months, as outlined in the treaty."

"Good," said Tsunade, and narrowed her eyes at Kakashi as Urushi and Akino emerged from the brush to flank them through the rest of the fields. "You get that, Hatake? Six months to get those genin of yours good at water-walking."

"They'll be ready," Kakashi confirmed. Kami, he hoped they'd be ready.

"Did you say genin?" Genma dropped out of a tree, senbon protruding from beneath his own mask. "Kakashi, are you making mini-me's?"

Shikaku shuddered.

"I'm not the one training them," Kakashi defended. "Kami knows I'd do a shit job of it."

"I don't know, Genma drawled. "Itachi's still ticking, isn't he?"

"Itachi is doing that himself," he retorted.

"Uchiha Itachi is probably not the benchmark for mental health," Shikaku muttered.

"Are you done gossiping?" Tsunade demanded, effectively putting an end to their hushed conversation. "Where's Tatami?"

"Forward scouting, ma'am," Genma reported smartly as they came up to the lip of the valley. "He'll meet us back at base camp."

Shizune, Tonton clutched in her arms and Shiba at her heels, met them at the treeline. "How did it go?" she asked, squeezing Tonton until the little pig squeaked in protest.

"We have an alliance," Tsunade said with a sigh. "Kami help us all."

The low-grade chaos of Kakashi's Tetsu base camp was as great a contrast to the near-silence of the Yu base camp as a typhoon was to a mist.

Perched in a tree overlooking the camp training hollow with Bisuke half-curled in his lap, Kakashi watched Shisui run his team through its paces.

Shisui's favorite exercise by far involved sprinting across a circle denoted by numbered points - a drill he'd unsurprisingly either passed along or forced onto his students.

Three blurs zigzagged their way across the circle - one clockwise, two counterclockwise - intersecting in each other's paths easily. Kakashi shifted his headband up, opening Obito's eye in time to watch Temari execute a neat flip to avoid Neji, who slid under her, before continuing to tag the marker on the edge of the circle and whirl to sprint for the opposite side once again.

"Watch it!" Neji snapped, swerving sharply to avoid a three-person collision.

"Watch yourself!" Temari fired back, already on the opposite side of the circle.

In the same amount of time, Haku had sprinted the full length twice.

"Come on, kids!" Shisui called gleefully. "Are you just going to let Haku-kun smoke you like that?"

Perhaps that was a signal or a reminder, because in the next moment, Neji hurled three kunai at Haku, one after the other, but the other boy was far too fast, and Temari deflected the last away from her before hurling her own. Haku brought up a fistful of senbon, and the kunai ricocheted at Neji, who twisted out of the way and directly into Temari's path.

The older girl responded by grabbing him by the shoulder and throwing him bodily into Haku, knocking them both to the edge of the makeshift arena as she zipped past.

Haku recovered his feet first, tripping Temari neatly, before Neji forced her to roll to the side with a hurled shuriken as he darted away.

"Time!" announced Shisui, clapping his hands, and the three blurs realized back into shinobi children. "And that's 214 to 184 to 179." Shisui shook his head. "You gotta stop letting Haku-kun play you like this," he admonished when Temari huffed a disappointed sigh.

"Neither of us will suddenly become faster than Haku," Neji pointed out, crossing his arms.

"No," agreed Shisui, "but even though this is mostly a speed and agility drill, you can't forget about strategy. If you and Temari-chan had worked together to block Haku-kun more instead of each other, he wouldn't have gotten so far ahead of you two." He surveyed his charges. "Let's take a ten minute break and move on to individual training," he decided.

"Are you spying?"

Kakashi covered Obito's eye and glanced behind him. "Observing," he corrected, as Bisuke flopped his head over to blink sleepy eyes at the newcomer.

"From a distance. Covertly," noted San dryly, sliding off Yuuki's back. "I do not understand why you do not view from closer."

"That's not necessary," said Kakashi, subtly nudging Bisuke back onto his lap as the ninken began to slide off.

"They are pack, are they not?" San wandered to the edge of the cliff, peering down at the team. Yuuki nosed up alongside her, settling with a sigh in the snow.

"No. Drop it, San," Kakashi said gruffly. Itachi and Shisui, and even Zabuza, would have backed down, but San was not raised military the way the rest of them were.

"My mother told me," San said placidly, a non-sequitur, "that long ago, in this forest, lived a clan of men and wolves."

"Izuhara Miyoko?" Kakashi asked cautiously.

"No," said San. "My wolf-mother." She carded a hand through her wolf's fur. "They were beloved by my mother, fierce in their battles and fierce in their bonds. But eventually they grew tired of bloodletting and left the forest for the plains of the west. Instead of warriors, the ningen became farmers of the land, and though they were no longer True wolves, their companions remained wolves in spirit.

"As the years passed, old enemies discovered where they had gone and sought retribution for past grievances. Many years had flown by and the men had hidden away their weapons and forgotten how to fight. But their wolves had not. The loyal wolves defended their companions until they could rally against their foes. The enemy was driven off, but the cost was high and paid in blood.

"At the end of the day, there were no more Hatake wolves. Only Hatake ningen ."

Absently, Kakashi felt a hot moisture seeping into the bandana covering Obito's eye, and wondered when he'd realized who this story had been about.

"The ningen mourned their brave companions," San continued quietly. "They would not accept their deaths, and so followed them into the spirit lands. Moved by their devotion, the shinigami decreed that if they so wished, the wolves may bind themselves to a single ningen who could call them back into a mortal body with a blood sacrifice. However, some of the wolves and ningen wished not to fight any longer and longed for the peace brought by the spirit lands, and beyond, the Pure Lands. And so half the ningen stayed in the spirit lands with their wolves, and half the wolves returned to the mortal realm with their ningen .

"The clan left their farms. They were not destined to be farmers, and that land was cursed to them. The name Hatake became one feared and respected among men.

"And when a Hatake child comes of age," she began.

"He walks the spirit lands to find a wolf-spirited who died an unjust death," Kakashi murmured. "He spills blood in recognition of the blood spilled for him and finds a pack to which he will bind himself."

"Your clan strayed far, but never from its roots." San smiled softly. "And now you've come home. Can you feel it?" She turned her face up towards the sky. "This land is where your ancestors roamed. And now, here, you bear the favor of my wolf-mother."

Kakashi honestly didn't feel anything special about the woods, other than the fact that it had successfully harbored them and assorted loud shinobi children for the past four months, and he certainly had never met San's elusive wolf-mother, let alone felt whatever her favor was supposed to be.

"A Hatake is only strong with a pack," San said reproachfully. "Your wolves are not enough. You are a ningen , so you must have a ningen pack."

"And you?" Kakashi challenged. "Where's your ningen pack?"

San eyed him, amused. "You are my ningen pack," she said simply. "You have been since you saved my life seven years ago. And I am wolf enough to not need more."

Part of Kakashi complained that this was cheating. "Hm," he said noncommittally.

"The ningen pups are already your pack," San said severely. "You should not remain so distant."

" Thank you, San," Kakashi growled, narrowing his eyes, and thankfully, this time, she got the hint.

She sniffed. "I am going to make clothes for your pups now," she said haughtily, "since they brought in a nice moose pelt. You should stop hitting at the plants and make sure they know that they are your pack."

Bemused, he watched her vanish back through the snow with a swish of Yuuki's bushy tail.

"...hitting at the plants?" Bisuke asked doubtfully.

"She means beating around the bush," Kakashi sighed. "She thinks I'm avoiding the pups."

The hound blinked lethargically up at him. "Are you?"

"No," denied Kakashi indignantly.

"Right," said Bisuke knowingly. "That's why you're watching them train from all the way up here, and why you stalk them while they're hunting but vanish once they're back to base camp, and - "

"All right ," Kakashi growled. "I don't have time to train them. I'm out running missions or at HQ more often than I am back here, and they don't know me well anyways. The rest of the team has it handled; I don't need any more distractions."

"Mhmm," Bisuke hummed sleepily.

Kakashi was fairly certain that his father had never had to deal with insolence on this scale. No, his father's pack had been the most wolfish since, apparently, the Hatake pack ninken were actual wolves. "All right, time to go," he grunted, scooping the ninken up and onto his shoulder.

"Where?" Bisuke squirmed around to get a better view.

"To oversee Shisui training his team," muttered Kakashi.

For his part, Shisui did not look especially surprised to see him padding into the training hollow. "Taichou," he greeted cheerfully, Sharingan spinning merrily in his uncovered eye. "Come get a closer look."

"Aa," answered Kakashi, shoving his hands in his pockets and straightening his spine.

Nearest to them, Neji matched Shisui's clone strike for strike, tanto against tanto. Just past him, Haku sat in the snow, legs folded neatly beneath him and one hand up in a seal as ice coalesced into blades in the air before him. At the far end of the hollow, Temari sent a massive, crescent-shaped fuuton blade at the side of the mountain.

In a village, this team would more than be ready for entry in the Chuunin Exams. Perhaps not for promotion, but as strong competitors nonetheless.

"Team meeting later," he informed Shisui, even as his eyes tracked Haku's projectiles, "but Tsunade-hime sealed the alliance with Terumi Mei yesterday morning."

Shisui let out a low whistle. "This is crazy. This is actually, seriously insane," he said. "Who the hell goes, 'wow, we don't have enough shinobi, why don't we mercenary ourselves out in exchange for more?'"

"There was more strategy involved than that," Kakashi pointed out dryly.

"It's all pretty dependent on Terumi actually fulfilling her side of the deal and not going, hey, I like having these Hana-ha shinobi around, maybe I'll just keep them in Kiri once they win it back for me," Shisui argued. "Any plan contingent on a formerly-hostile ally's goodwill is pretty trippy."

"Circumstantially antagonistic at worst," Kakashi defended. "We're running out of options. Danzo has a hit out on every Command Corps shinobi who defected and many of the General Forces as well. They may be on the cusp of war, but not too distracted to ignore the Hana-ha camps in Yu."

"You ask a lot of our people," Shisui said quietly, "to go into battle for a land that isn't ours for a chance to fight a second war for our home."

"Is it not worth it?" Kakashi tilted his head to meet the younger shinobi's suddenly weary eyes.

Shisui looked away and was silent for a long moment, pensively watching Temari practice her hand seals. "You know I'll follow you, whatever happens, Taichou," he said at last. "But others may not."

"I know," said Kakashi.

Neji launched himself into a spinning kick, sending snow flying as he forced Shisui's clone backwards. With a backhanded slash, he plunged the blade in the the bunshin's side, and it dispersed in a billow of smoke.

"Are they ready?" Kakashi asked.

Shisui turned to him incredulously. "For war? Of course not, they've been training for three, four months."

"They would serve a primarily support role, away from the front lines," Kakashi reminded. "Genin squads are part of the war effort in any village."

"Okay," Shisui admitted. "For non combat-intensive missions, they're qualified. In Konoha, they're C-rank mission ready. But this is war," he stressed. "Shit happens in war."

"So, they're ready," Kakashi summarized.

Shisui blew out a short breath. "Yes, Taichou. Reluctantly, they're ready."

"Noted," acknowledged Kakashi. Bisuke twisted around, and Kakashi caught him absently before he could slide down his back. "We're not going to throw them into a bloodbath," he said. "Not the way you and I were."

"No," said Shisui, "but we can't control what happens during war."

"In six months, Hana-ha is going to war," Kakashi announced. Guruko sprawled at his feet, limbs splayed languidly in all directions. Kakashi had thought it fitting to bring his youngest - or rather newest - ninken to his something-like-a-meeting with the assorted shinobi children, who in turn were arrayed in clusters of those thick greyish cloaks Shisui had for some reason seen fit to buy using their very limited supply budget.

"With Konoha?" Naruto immediately demanded. "Are we gonna fight Anbu ?"

Sakura made her best attempt at smothering him with the loose folds of his own cloak, while Sasuke made a face that was very much like his brother's but slightly rounder and more annoyed.

"No," said Kakashi patiently. Guruko shuffled his way upright. "With Kiri. And no, you will not be fighting Anbu."

None of the children appeared as surprised as Kakashi had assumed they would be. Hinata leaned back a little as Sai's face took on a pensive cast. Temari and Neji exchanged glances, while Haku looked vaguely guilty.

Okay. In hindsight, it was premature of him to presume that the others wouldn't have mentioned the potential alliance to their teams, or that Zabuza wouldn't have spoken of it with Haku, and Haku wouldn't have told his team, who wouldn't have told the rest of the children.

The ripple of children exchanging unsubtle looks - minus Gaara, who stared blankly into the middle distance and likely into his own head, and Naruto, whose head was entirely enveloped by his cloak as Sakura wrestled him into a chokehold - unsurprisingly converged on the oldest girl. "Where do we fit in this war?" Temari challenged. "Do you expect us to fight for you?"

"I'm giving you a choice," said Kakashi.

The children all stilled - even Naruto, who froze halfway through fumbling his cloak out of his mouth.

"We will need all available shinobi when the time comes, and noncombatants are liabilities," said Kakashi, leveling each with a serious stare. "For the past four months, your sensei have given you the tools you need to survive. You can walk away right now - we'll drop you in a civilian town with supplies to set up a new life or stay in hiding or whatever you want. There is a chance that after the war we can find you again, but for your own safety, we would not be in contact at any time."

Another round of glances. Sasuke raised an eyebrow at Sakura, who frowned and shook her head slightly. Hinata tilted her head at Neji, who blinked. "What is the other option?" asked Sai.

"You join Hana-ha as full members, as genin." Kakashi resisted the urge to shove his hands in his pockets. "You are subject to all rules, regulations, and command structures, and in the future," the distant, distant future, "you will be instated as shinobi of Konoha."

Sakura chewed absently on her lip. Naruto's entire face was screwed up in a frown.

"You don't have to decide now," Kakashi offered, as if he hadn't already added all eight of the Konoha-Suna kids in his troop tally to the rest of the Hana-ha leadership the day before. "This is a lot to think about."

"I will," said Temari suddenly. She met Kakashi's eyes with a fierce glare. "I'm tired of running and hiding. I'm going to fight."

"Yeah!" Naruto chimed in. "I'm going to kick some ninja a - "

"Me too," agreed Sakura as she tackled her blond teammate into the snow.

"All right," said Kakashi holding up his hand, as the others voiced their agreement. "If you wish to opt out, you can tell myself or your sensei anytime before sundown in two days. For those of you who wish to stay, you will begin combat training in earnest."

Kakashi was no coward, but he stepped into a shunshin fast enough to rival Shisui the second the group of shinobi children exploded into chatter. Behind him, Guruko let out an alarmed bark, but Kakashi had done his time and sometimes sacrifices were inevitable. He was finished pack-bonding with the pups. Dropping an ultimatum counted as pack-bonding, right?

"Team meeting, part two," he announced, appearing in a whirlwind next to Itachi, who was too used to Kakashi's comings and goings to be startled.

"Kami, not another meeting," Zabuza grumbled, squinting down the length of his sword.

Kakashi resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "Brief announcement. I want you to focus on teaching active combat."

"What?" Shisui demanded. "Aren't we keeping them in a support role?"

Zabuza set down his blade. "No need to switch it all up," he drawled. "You want your own genin team, take the three fucking loud brats off my hands and form them in your image or whatever."

"No," said Kakashi. He didn't teach, especially not genin. "Until now, I asked you to focus on teaching survival and evasion, with combat as a last-ditch option. In light of the impending war, you will mold the teams into more balanced, combat-based configurations."

"I've been teaching combat," Shisui protested indignantly.

"Wait," said Itachi, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. "Let him explain first."

Kakashi met Itachi's eyes steadily. "Momochi will continue with Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke and train them as a full-assault team," he said. "They have the basics down, but they need refinement, and training in more specialized ninjutsu."

Zabuza grunted a reluctant agreement and muttered what sounded like "tiny loud morons" under his breath.

"Shisui will train Haku, Temari, and Neji as a strike team - fast entrance, deal massive damage, get out without getting caught. Shisui, you've got them on speed drills, so double down on stealth and damage."

Shisui nodded absently, but Kakashi saw a spark of something anticipatory in his eye - having essentially functioned as a one-man strike team during his time in Anbu, he was arguably the best possible sensei in all things speedy and sneaky. Zabuza still wasn't too happy about his apprentice being coopted, but he'd live. "Itachi - instruct Gaara, Hinata, and Sai in infiltration with a focus on information retrieval."

Shisui frowned. "Information retrieval?"

"Hinata is an apt sensor already with her Byakugan," Itachi noted, "and Sai's Chouju Giga techniques are ideal for sending and receiving confidential information. Even Gaara's sand armor can be utilized as a disguise."

"Exactly," said Kakashi, and paused. "I expect you to help with training each others' teams in your own area of expertise."

"What?" Zabuza burst out, then reconsidered. "What you're saying is I foist my brats off on someone else," he said speculatively.

Kakashi fought a grimace. "...yes."

There was a suspicious gleam in Zabuza's eye. "Excellent," said the Swordsman.

"For example," said Kakashi, desperately trying to steer the conversation back on course, "Momochi has expertise in kenjutsu a variety of weaponry that maybe Sasuke or Temari would find useful, and Itachi's range of ninjutsu experience might help Naruto or Gaara. And as, arguably, the most well-adjusted shinobi on this team, Shisui can teach the art of lying." He paused. "And blending in with other shinobi or civilians," he added.

Shisui paused. "I can't argue with that," he admitted. "All of you combined have the emotional intelligence of a walnut."

Kakashi narrowed his eyes dangerously.

"Except Taichou!" Shisui backpedalled brightly. "Because I have nothing but the utmost respect for you, and you are intelligent in every way."

Itachi rolled his eyes discreetly, because Kakashi had taught his subordinate well.

"I've given them the two-day deadline to give me an answer," Kakashi continued. "Tell your teams however you want, but in three days, begin with the new assignments. Understood?"

"Hai," Itachi and Shisui echoed, and Zabuza sort of grunted an affirmative.

Well, that was enough human interaction for today, ningen pack be damned. Kakashi raised his hand in a perfunctory salute. "San's volunteered for third watch. I'll take first. Zabuza, you get middle," he said, just for kicks and to see the man sputter in outrage. "Later."

High up in the cliffs, on a narrow ledge at the edge of the hollow, Kakashi sat with his back to the cliff wall with a pile of ragged missives, plans, and orders to begin his watch. Not ten minutes in, a frantic scrabbling heralded the arrival of Pakkun. The little pug hauled himself over the lip of the ledge and glared at Kakashi's amused air.

"Laugh it up," he snarled without heat, and stumped over to trample dusty paws over Kakashi's abdomen.

"Watch the uniform," said Kakashi lazily, resting his notebook against Pakkun's back and scribbling a reply to a Hana-ha captain in Ishi. "I'm only allowed to get bloodstains on this one."

"That's disturbing," Pakkun admonished unconcernedly. "Mind your words in front of the pups. You'll corrupt them."

"They're plenty corrupt," Kakashi scoffed. "Did you see Sakura try to suffocate Naruto today? Completely, organically, bloodthirsty."

Uhei hauled himself over the edge as well, flailing clumsily as he clawed his way to Kakashi's side. Kakashi eyed him dubiously. The ledge was getting a little too crowded for his tastes.

"I'm keeping watch, not throwing a party," he complained.

"Guruko and Shiba are testing Urushi's patience again," Uhei grumped, flattening his ears against his head. "I'm not going to be there when he kicks their asses and they go whining to someone bigger."

"You wouldn't be in this position if you didn't go along with them the first dozen times," Kakashi pointed out unsympathetically.

"It was fun the first time around," groaned Uhei, arranging himself on top of Kakashi's feet. "But it always ends the same way."

Kakashi rolled his scrap of missive into something resembling a scroll and tied it off. "They should realize that the only one close to giving Urushi a fair fight is Akino," he said absently, pulling the next message from the stack.

"Akino's more like to side with Urushi," Pakkun pointed out.

Uhei's tail thumped gleefully against the stone. "They'd totally get curb stomped. I want to see that."

"We don't talk about pack members getting curb stomped," Pakkun yawned. "Bad for morale."

"I'd watch that too," Kakashi offered, and grunted when the little ninken jabbed a paw below his flak jacket. "Ack!"

"Sorry, boss," Pakkun said sweetly, and Uhei had the good sense not to snicker.

"Ah, shit," Kakashi muttered, skimming a report from a captain in western Hi. "Togeito's teams are out of shuriken and any nonperishable food that isn't beans." He unfurled a length of scroll. "Uhei - tomorrow morning, run this to Koto no Sato, south Yu," he said absently. The last thing he wanted was desertion because of beans, and the position of the camp was precarious enough given its proximity to Konoha.

Uhei hummed agreement, paws flexing in anticipation of a good run.

"Don't ask me to go with him," Pakkun muttered, wrinkling his nose. "All that snow will chap my paws like crazy. It's bad enough here when I don't have to run around."

"I need you here," Kakashi reassured him. He set aside the rest of the supply requests to pore over the intelligence reports - written out on neat paragraphs in a formal scroll, scribbled hastily on a restaurant napkin, and even one where the operative apparently had nothing better than what appeared to be a chicken bone to write on. He paused and brought the latter to his nose. Definitely chicken.

Needless to say, the operative's handwriting was terrible. If Kakashi's only original remaining eye went blind reading this godsawful chicken scratch, he was going to bury himself in ten meters of sand and wait for death.

Kakashi was beginning to understand why the shinobi in charge of processing mission reports had been so high-strung.

Jounin Chicken Bone's teams had gotten into a minor scuffle with a team of Kusagakure shinobi, but -as explained in a small string of coded two-word sentences - three team members had sustained minor injuries and the entire section had needed to relocate in a hurry before Kusa discovered an entire score of renegades on their turf. Kakashi scribbled a confirmation, with orders to keep him updated on the situation, and moved on to the napkin.

Kakashi frowned, skimming the scrawl. "Pakkun," he said absently. "What did that one report say about activity in Kitakyushu?"

Pakkun blinked consideringly. "The port city, western coast of Hi? Danzo's had a four or five team guard post stationed there permanently, but last week a couple other Konoha teams went into the city on missions. Why?"

Kakashi tapped his pen against his mouth thoughtfully. "Some of those teams started cleaning out the warehouses by the wharf - arresting, killing, or scaring off both local businesses and organized crime. Two or three Anbu were sighted throughout the city. They're getting ready for something big."

"He can't be preparing his own invasion into Kumo, can he?" Pakkun growled. "Danzo doesn't have the manpower."

"Two years ago, he didn't, not with twenty-five percent of the General Forces and at least forty percent of the Command Corps dead, defected, or imprisoned after the Fall," Kakashi countered. "Now, he's had time to regroup and fill in the ranks."

"But by sea?" Pakkun snorted. "Man must be insane. The only thing a Kiri-nin hates more than a Kumo shinobi is a Konoha shinobi."

"Kiri has its hands full with the insurgents," Kakashi pointed out.

"So he's using the unrest in Kiri to move his troops." Pakkun grimaced.

"Because A doesn't have the balls to," Uhei muttered.

"A wouldn't expect it for the same reason he's ruled it out - it's high risk, even if it is high reward," mused Kakashi. He shuffled through his notebook and unfolded a map of the Elemental Nations. "The dozen most direct routes all cross through the Yu-Uzushio strait."

Pakkun peeled back his lips in a silent snarl. "If Hana-ha mobilizes to Uzushio, and Danzo discovers us there, he would abandon his plans for war on Kumo and use all his forces to crush us while we're all in one place - we'd make too tempting a target to pass up."

"The civil war will benefit Danzo; he'll be open to dealing with the Kiri insurgents for passage through the strait." Kakashi scribbled absently in his notebook. "But Hana-ha would need to operate under complete anonymity to avoid detection."

"After all the publicity we've been building up." Pakkun heaved a long-suffering sigh. "'Be seen in different villages,' 'publicize Danzo's crimes,' 'make Danzo nervous,' and now we need 'complete anonymity.'"

"Wait." Uhei shuffled a little, cocking his head. "Do we want Kumo to win the war, or Konoha?"

"We do not want an invasion of Konohagakure no Sato," Pakkun said with remarkable patience, as if this was the first time he had explained this to a younger pack member and not the third or fourth. "Or any invasion that isn't Hana-ha's. Civilians and noncombatants in the line of fire is never good. Strictly speaking, no war is the best outcome, but that means Danzo will have a stronger force when we inevitably face him."

"We just want a few of our fellow Konoha comrades to die," Kakashi said dryly. "Hopefully the Danzo faction."

"Danzo got rid of pretty much all of the Yondaime or Sandaime's most favored," Pakkun pointed out, "so that's most of Konoha."

"Uh," said Uhei, darting nervous glances at Kakashi.

Kakashi imagined that his facial expression must look especially dark. "Most of Konoha doesn't know the truth of what happened when the Sandaime died," he reminded his pack second quietly. As with any battle, the victor told the tale: the village knew only what Danzo told them - that the Hokage's Anbu guard colluded with Kumo agents to assassinate him, that every shinobi that fled, was killed, or was arrested in the aftermath was part of a greater coup d'etat orchestrated by the Uchiha Clan. In Konoha, there was no one left to tell them otherwise.

Those that had, in the beginning, had quietly vanished.

"But they also know that Danzo was never meant to be Hokage," Pakkun pointed out. "Part of Konoha will never accept him."

"It's a good thing that Sandaime-sama thought to name a successor as he was dying," agreed Kakashi grimly. "It's the only reason we still have a foothold."

Kakashi finished detailing his notes on Kitakyushu and his proposal for a response to a Konoha invasion of Kumo by sea in silence as his ninken stared pensively out into the snow. Well, Pakkun pensively, and probably Uhei blankly. "Uhei, this is top priority - you'll take this straight to headquarters tomorrow," he said. "Never mind the Koto message - Togeito's teams can survive on beans for another couple of days until Guruko gets down there."

"Copy, copy," said Uhei, thumping his whiplike tail against Kakashi's side.

"Urushi will accompany you," Kakashi added.

Uhei groaned. "I want to go fast," he complained. "Urushi will just slow me down."

"No whining," Kakashi admonished. "It's extremely important that this information doesn't get intercepted." He paused. "Besides, you may be faster than Urushi, but he can still run you into the ground."

"Damn him and his freakish endurance," Uhei mock-growled.

"I'm going to tell him you called him freakish," Kakashi said mildly, "and Pakkun will sit back and laugh when he eviscerates you."

"Pakkun is against friendly pack mutilation," Uhei pointed out. "He'd side with me."

"In your dreams, pup," drawled Pakkun, still half-buried under assorted paperwork.

Kakashi sifted through his woefully large stack of papers with a sigh. "Pakkun, if Momochi's awake, tell him to go back to sleep. I'm going to be up anyways, I'll cover his watch."

"Sure thing," said Pakkun, and wriggled out and down the rock face.

Pakkun's dependable efficiency, however, met its match in one stubborn ex-Swordsman. Kakashi resisted the urge to roll his eyes when the other man emerged from the sleeping quarters with his massive blade already slung over his back.

As he deciphered a coded report, Zabuza settled on the mountain wall next to him in a crouch. "Go the fuck to sleep," the other man greeted him with an irritated scowl.

Kakashi cut him a glance out of the corner of his eye and proceeded to ignore him.

Zabuza rolled his eyes. "Hatake," he enunciated slowly, as if talking to a particularly dull-witted child. "Sleep. You're not a fucking machine."

"I've functioned on less," Kakashi said dismissively, when it became apparent that Zabuza was not going to go away. He'd had a solid five hours the night before. That was practically luxurious.

Zabuza snorted. "When we're at war you can help yourself to all the sleep deprivation and shitty ration food you fucking want, but we're not at war yet. Kill yourself later, there's no rush."

Damn. Kakashi hated it when other people harped on his bad habits. Even more when they made sense. "This can't wait."

"Can't you fucking delegate?" Zabuza retorted, baring pointed teeth like one of Kakashi's hounds. "I know you don't trust me, but let the murder cousins go through the intel and, I don't know, summarize."

"I do," Kakashi said lowly, and regretted it as soon as the words slipped out of his mouth. Fuck, fuck, what the fuck was wrong with his control?

Uhei eyed him sideways.

"Bullshit. Shisui complained about it the other day, sayin' you stayed awake three days in a row instead of filling him in - "

"Trust you," Kakashi finished, because commit to it, right? He turned to face the other nukenin, who looked increasingly uncomfortable.

"That's a shitty decision," Zabuza said finally, turning his head aside.

"I know," muttered Kakashi wryly, and turned back to his reports. Then, he paused. "Are you volunteering to do paperwork?"

The Swordsman scowled. "Gods, no," he growled. "I'm volunteering the teenagers to do it."

Kakashi smiled, though he knew only his eye was visible. "Tough," he said sweetly, and handed over a report, piece of paper, and a pen. "Read it, bullet-point it. Every detail."

Zabuza snatched them from him. "I fucking hate paperwork," he snapped.

Who the fuck didn't.

By virtue of having been an elite ninja in his own right, Zabuza worked both efficiently and thoroughly. After checking over the other man's first couple of reports, Kakashi skimmed the rest, and by the time Zabuza's watch ended, they'd finished the rest of the report backlog between the two.

"I," Zabuza growled, "hate shitty writing. If I ever meet these dipshits I'm dropkicking them into the middle of the ocean. You know, in my program, they fucking beat you if your handwriting was too shoddy."

Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "Your Academy sounds rough," he said wryly.

"I wasn't in the Academy," the other shinobi retorted. "I was trained in the breeding program that produced me.

Kakashi frowned. "But the Academy graduation massacre - "

"My test as well as theirs," Zabuza grunted. "Every product of Kiri's pilot eugenics program was entered in a free for all melee, along with the prospective Academy graduation class. Only one child walked out of that room alive." He bared his teeth in a humorless grin. "I was the pride and joy of that program. Only the best, genkai kekkei-free blood in my veins - a clan known for berserkers, and a clan that dominated the Intelligence Corps."

Narrowing his eyes, Kakashi snapped his notebook shut. "The program was a success, then," he noted cautiously.

"The program was shut down," Zabuza corrected. "They had me execute my handlers, and abandoned their efforts at breeding the perfect shinobi." He caught Kakashi's look and snorted. "Come on, Hatake. The Mist isn't sunshine and rainbows like Konoha. My handlers knew what they were doing - and what would happen to them if it succeeded."

"Over a hundred children," Kakashi pointed out. "You murdered over a hundred children."

"And saved a thousand more," Zabuza snarled. "The lives I took that day were lives earned for today."

Kakashi leaned back. "You really believe that," he said.

"I know it," Zabuza snapped back. "Kiri changed its graduation test after what I did. That's at least fifty kids a class, two classes a year that didn't die trying to fucking graduate. Fifty years of the Bloody Mist's infamous exam. A hundred lives is nothing ." A slip in his control, just a blip, and Kakashi could feel the malice in his voice, the utter conviction. "You know what? I would do it again. I fucking would, a thousand times over."

"They were children," said Kakashi listlessly.

"I was a child!" Zabuza snarled. "But I was also a weapon. Because that's what a shinobi is, child or not."

Kakashi couldn't think of an answer to that, staring unseeingly at his report. "Damn," he muttered at last. "You're not wrong."

Zabuza huffed a bitter laugh. "Where did your sunshine and rainbows go, Hatake?"

"Reiketsu." The word left an acrid taste on his tongue. "I didn't get that name from killing my enemies."

For a moment, Zabuza was silent. "Yeah?" he said, almost gently.

"Yeah," said Kakashi, and with Uhei at his side, left Zabuza sitting alone.

Once, Kakashi had been a child living in the most prosperous Hidden Village in the Elemental Nations with friends, family, and a sensei that cared about him, and he let himself lose it all without realizing how precious they were. But that was neither here nor now. Kakashi had no time for old grief or old memories. He could not - would not let them touch him. Not with Konoha's future riding on his shoulders, and nine wayward shinobi children asleep in the same hollow.

And Zabuza might be his ally now, but what happened when he believed his debt was paid? He was still a child-killer, a prodigy in the art of slaughter, oftentimes bloodthirsty for its own sake. He was a killer who would never stop being a killer.

Kakashi wasn't willing to bet that the other man was above exploiting his past once his goodwill was gone, no matter what his strange code of honor appeared to be. One day, he might declare he was done, fed up with taking orders from Konoha dogs, and carve a swath through Hana-ha.

But as much of a betrayal as that would be, Kakashi would understand.

They were, after all, shinobi.


	8. Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8: Sakura Is A Saint And Nothing You Say Can Change My Mind

Just a girl, doing her best.

* * *

MISSION REPORT: D-54

Per last report, targets AT1, AT3, AT4 and allied noncombatant NCHS positioned in [REDACTED] base under care of ACHN and ACNS. Security status: medium risk; enemy combatants believed to have pursued Operative Cat-15. Current status unknown.

Operative Cat-15 departed [REDACTED] base with AT2 due to increased care necessary due to age.

Operative Cat-15 experienced physical fatigue, slight depletion of chakra. Status adequate.

AT2 expressed restlessness, mild to moderate fear. Rate of weight increase slowing. Rate of height increase slowing. Conclusion: insufficient nutrition. Unable to acquire age-appropriate nutritional sources. AT2 immune system possibly compromised.

Pursued by enemy combatants (4) affiliation: Sunagakure. Evasive maneuvers prioritized.

No contact with allied combatants.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

* * *

Sakura was a clever girl. It's what her father always told her with warmth, and what her Academy sensei said with a cool blankness. And she took pride in it, because it made her feel special - finally, something she was good at, something she excelled at, even when all the other kids outran her and outsparred her.

But Sakura was just a girl, and the shinobi world grew very cruel very quickly - and very, very lonely.

Naruto and Sasuke might have been her team, but they fought like cats and were thick as thieves and left her in the dust. And so she was alone.

Running away from Zabuza-sensei, alone, on top of the lake.

Well, this part was as much because Sasuke and Naruto were busy blowing holes in the trees since their chakra control was terrible as it was her lack of combat prowess. And technically, she was supposed to be trying to tag the scrap of cloth tied around her sensei's wrist. But her point stood.

Sakura dove out of the way as Zabuza cast a massive tidal wave across the lake, sending freezing water and chunks of ice flying. She tucked into a forward roll, coming up with her hands already in the seals for a bunshin, and when she charged, she was one of four streaking across the uneven surface.

Another suiton sent water bullets screaming through the air, and Sakura threw herself sideways as they ripped through one of her bunshin and she lost control of it. With the remaining two, she flanked Zabuza-sensei, drawing a kunai in each hand and hurling them in tandem with her clones.

Zabuza-sensei swung his massive sword in a wide arc, deflecting Sakura's kunai and passing right through her clones' before lunging at her.

With more panic than she'd admit to, Sakura scrambled backwards. A quick kamawari switched her with a chunk of lake ice, just in time for Zabuza-sensei to bisect it in a vicious downward slash. He bared his teeth in a satisfied grin. "Good," he rumbled. "You're learning, girl."

He whipped around and hurled his sword in one fluid movement. Sakura let out a yelp muffled by the collar of her cloak as she threw herself into a second substitution.

The other day, Sakura had perched in a tree to watch a snow leopard hunt a rabbit. Only, it didn't just catch its prey - it cornered it, batted it around with sheathed claws. Toyed with it.

That was what Sakura imagined Zabuza-sensei did when he trained them.

Sakura palmed a kunai and sprinted directly at Zabuza-sensei, lashing out with her closed fist at his head. He leaned back to avoid her strike, and with her left hand, plunged down her blade at his wrist.

He caught her fist easily, dwarfing her hand with his own and squeezing until she was forced to drop the kunai. The cloth fluttered tauntingly at his wrist. "Less good," he growled. "Don't fight like a brawler unless you have the strength to back it up."

Sakura glowered, using her trapped hand as an anchor to twist her entire body up into a spinning kick aimed at his head. Zabuza-sensei shoved her away before it could connect, and she landed awkwardly half on a chunk of surface ice, half off. She scrabbled for a moment to get her feet under her before standing unsteadily on the ice.

Zabuza-sensei watched, unimpressed, and leaned over to pull his sword out of the water next to him.

Sakura gritted her teeth. She needed a new plan. She was never going to be able even touch Zabuza-sensei on her own.

She needed to get him closer to the shore.

She glared at her sensei, watching her boredly with arms crossed. "Come on, girl," he goaded, hefting his sword onto his shoulder and striding in her direction. "The enemy's not going to give you ten minutes to do your godsdamned hair."

Sakura scowled. Her hair was scraggly and shaggy and tangled and definitely needed more than ten minutes to sort out, but she'd had nothing but lye soap to wash it with for years. She palmed a handful of shuriken, and hurled it.

Zabuza-sensei didn't bother with dodging, continuing his inexorable advance. Sakura grinned fiercely and yanked on the wire with all her strength. Its attached shuriken jerked back neatly into the circle cut at the tip of his sword, wrapping tightly around the blunt side of the sword.

Zabuza-sensei looked mildly amused as Sakura gave another almighty wrench and the blade flew out of his hand and arched towards her. Sakura caught the handle with both hands, but it was heavier than she'd expected, and it knocked the wind out of her, sending her skidding backwards across the water.

"That won't help you if you can't use it," he said, and charged.

Sakura let out a panicked huff and hurled the sword towards the shore, sprinting after it blindly as her sensei bore down on her. She flipped through the signs for the bunshin as she ran, and then there were five of her, hurtling towards land.

Zabuza-sensei landed in their midst, and they scattered as he popped one with a perfunctory jab.

A kunai took down another, and then Sakura hit the shoreline as her bunshin continued into the trees.

"This is an exercise in fighting on top of the water," Zabuza-sensei warned. "Life and death on the Kiri battlefield comes down to whoever outlasts his opponents. Those who can't stay up - " he punctuated this with a lunge, and Sakura flitted out of the way, " - drown." He stalked towards the land, and the water followed him.

Sakura knew that, but some prey instinct drove her to run to where her predator wouldn't be so strong. Next time, she knew Zabuza-sensei wouldn't even let her get near the shore, but as a sensei, he was ever willing enough to see what she would try.

She hoped she wouldn't disappoint.

She pawed at her leg, but her makeshift kunai holster was empty, so she bared her teeth and pounced at him. He leaned back to dodge her punch but grabbed her by the arm and flung her off. She hit the ground hard, skidding on her back, and as he loomed over her, yelled, "Now!"

"Ha!" Naruto howled, bursting from the trees and swiping a kunai at Zabuza-sensei's face. Sasuke swept in from below, darting from the roots of the trees with a kunai in backhanded grip. Sakura lunged with a vicious grin.

Zabuza-sensei batted Naruto away like a wayward kitten, sending him flying, hopped neatly over Sasuke's blade, and kicked Sakura in the chest.

Sasuke pounced back in, a blade in either hand this time as Sakura fought to regain her breath. Naruto charged back in fists first, and Sakura finally flipped back on her feet as well. Zabuza-sensei dodged neatly out of the way, and she could see that neither Naruto or Sasuke would hit him but but if she could just reach, even though the trajectory of Sasuke's arm would -

She twisted, grabbing Zabuza-sensei's wrist, and -

Sakura's vision exploded into white, and she felt her body crumple to the side like a ragdoll. She gasped involuntarily as the pain roared in, sending daggers through her skull.

"Shit!" Zabuza-sensei snapped faintly, as if from a long distance away.

Scuffling footsteps. "Is she okay?" Sasuke asked, voice uncharacteristically small.

"No, you bastard, you just slammed a kunai into her head!" Naruto yelled shrilly.

"Just the hilt," Sasuke muttered guiltily, drowned out by Zabuza's snarl of, "If I hadn't stopped you, yours would have gone through her throat, you fucking moron!"

Sakura was glad of the relief from the silence that fell, even briefly. She felt rather than saw Zabuza-sensei crouch next to her. "Idiot girl," he muttered. "You're too young for that self-sacrificing bullshit."

Sakura opened her mouth to respond, but only a tiny mew of pain escaped.

"You, boy, get Shisui. Brat, get Hatake!" Zabuza ordered. "All right, girl," he said, as running footsteps receded, leaning over her into her field of vision. "You're fine. Stay down and don't move."

Sakura blinked up past her sensei at the sky and breathed shallowly, and felt hot tears pricking at her eyes. Why was she like this? Sasuke and Naruto always got hit and got right back up. They didn't stay on the ground and start crying. She wouldn't cry. She wouldn't. She was going to be a kunoichi, no matter what Neji muttered snidely under his breath when he thought she wasn't paying attention.

She maybe lost a little time, but regained her focus when another face leaned into her field of vision.

"Hey there, Sakura-chan," Shisui-sensei said warmly, his visible eye twinkling despite its serious cast. "Looks like you took a good one to the head."

Sakura tried to smile, though her vision blurred. "Yeah," she whispered. Sasuke hit hard.

"Well, not to worry," Shisui-sensei told her. "We just want to make sure you're not too hurt, so don't try to move until I tell you to, okay?"

"Okay," Sakura agreed, blinking rapidly. "It hurts," she added, before she could stop herself.

"Tell me if the pain increases," Shisui-sensei instructed. "Are you breathing okay?"

"Yeah," she said.

Silver-grey edged into the corner of her vision, and Sakura watched it as best she could without moving her head. "How is she?"

Sakura did not know Hatake Kakashi very well, except for the bit where he was super strong and generally distant and kind of scary actually.

Shisui-sensei choked on what sounded like a laugh. Oops. Sakura must have said that aloud.

"Hm," said the captain noncommittally.

"It's just a little head trauma," Zabuza-sensei said gruffly.

"It is bleeding, a lot, and she did seem a little disoriented," Shisui-sensei said.

"It's bleeding a lot, a lot," Sasuke chimed in, his voice a mixture of fascination and worry.

"All right, both of you, back to camp," Zabuza-sensei ordered abruptly.

"We want to make sure Sakura'll be okay!" Naruto complained.

"Now!" Zabuza-sensei snapped.

A bright light hammered into her eye, and Sakura flinched away.

"Don't move," reminded the captain sternly, flicking the flashlight over to her other eye. "She has a concussion," he said to the gathered sensei, clicking the light back off and tucking it back into a pocket. "But head injuries bleed a lot, so you don't need to worry about that too much."

"I'll take her back to camp," said Zabuza-sensei, and Sakura felt his hands slide surprisingly carefully behind her neck and under her knees. "Don't squirm, girl," he growled roughly. "If you make me drop you, you're fucking dead."

Shisui-sensei coughed another badly-hidden laugh behind them. "Don't jostle her neck," he called after them.

Zabuza-sensei huffed. "I know."

Sakura maybe closed her eyes and drifted off a little, because the next thing she knew, Zabuza-sensei was settling her down in the thick furs of San's bed.

"Sakura-chan," said Shisui-sensei, which startled Sakura because she hadn't heard him follow, "you can't sleep too long at one time, so one of us will wake you up every so often, okay?"

"Mmkay," Sakura murmured sleepily, and closed her eyes again.

"Gods, Z, you just going to let her sleep with blood caked all over her face?" she heard muzzily.

"Fuck off, Konoha, I'm getting to that."

Convalescing after her concussion sucked. Sakura didn't remember the first couple of days, when she slept pretty much the entire time with San or Zabuza-sensei or Shisui-sensei shaking her awake every two hours and sometimes spoon feeding her broth, but she definitely missed the bit where Itachi-sensei temporarily took over her and Naruto's and Sasuke's training while Zabuza-sensei ran yet another mission.

Sakura knew, kind of, that Itachi-sensei was better for teaching them how to fight, but she'd only just gotten used to Zabuza-sensei's oftentimes brutal training. She didn't want to have to figure out another sensei again, even if it was Sasuke's brother. But she would deal with it if it was the best way to make her a stronger kunoichi. She had to. She only had six months before she would have to fight for real.

"Oh, pup," San murmured as Sakura curled against Chie's warm stomach. The teen was somewhere behind the wolf's bulk, and Sakura blinked in her direction. "I do not understand why you are so eager to fight in a war that is not yours."

"It is mine," Sakura argued groggily. "Zabuza-sensei is fighting in it, and Shisui-sensei and Itachi-sensei and the captain and all my friends. I have to keep them safe."

San draped herself over Chie's back and regarded Sakura with unblinking amber eyes. "They fight because Kakashi orders it so," she pointed out, "and they believe in him. But you do not."

Sakura frowned at the cave ceiling. "I don't know him very well," she admitted, "but my friends are fighting because they want to go home to Konoha, and save it from the man who killed the last Hokage."

"Do you?"

Sakura shrugged. "I want to be wherever my friends are, even if I don't care about going back to Konoha," she said. "I'll protect them and fight with them no matter what."

San hummed. "You will fight for your pack, then. Good. Remember that," she ordered. "A time will come when that, your pack, will be your strength."

"Okay," Sakura agreed, eyelids drifting closed again as Chie's slow breathing lulled her back to sleep.

When she next opened her eyes, San and Chie had been replaced by Yuuki and Shisui-sensei. She blinked muzily as Shisui-sensei crouched at her side.

"How are we today, Sakura-chan?" Shisui-sensei ran a green-tinged hand over her forehead.

"Good," Sakura said sleepily.

"I see we still don't have any swelling," Shisui-sensei noted absently.

Sakura watched curiously as he let the chakra-glow fade, instead peeling back the bandages from her head. "Where did you learn how to do that?" she asked as he inspected the itchy cut above her ear.

Shisui-sensei tilted his head curiously. "Do what? Change a bandage?"

"That's medical ninjutsu, isn't it?" she asked. "The green chakra."

Shisui-sensei paused. "Yes," he said. "That was medical ninjutsu. I learned it - " he broke off with a sigh. "Sakura-chan," he said, "do you know what happened to me before the Fall?"

Sakura hesitated, frowning, because she'd just assumed Shisui-sensei had been a regular Konoha shinobi. "No," she answered.

Shisui-sensei sat back on his heels. "When I was thirteen, I was confronted by a village elder over a mission to stop a military coup in Konoha. We fought, and he stole my eye."

Sakura's eyes darted to the covered eye - or empty socket?

"But before I could find help or report the incident," Shisui-sensei continued, "another powerful shinobi took advantage of my weakened state. He wanted to engineer a perfect body, and in particular, was interested in my remaining eye and abilities. He kidnapped me from the village."

"Who was it?" whispered Sakura, almost afraid to ask.

"Do you know who the Sannin are?" Shisui-sensei asked, and she frowned. She did, really, but the knowledge slipped out of her grasp every time she reached for it. She scowled and shook her head.

"That's all right," said Shisui-sensei sympathetically, catching her frustration. "Your mind isn't at a hundred percent right now. They're three legendary shinobi from Konoha, renowned for combat ability and mastery of rare shinobi arts - some say they are the strongest in the Elemental Nations. None of them are in Konoha anymore - one is Tsunade-sama, an incredibly skilled iryo-nin. Another is Orochimaru, who wants immortality more than anything. He's the one that took me."

Sakura sat up slowly, hugging her arms around her. "What did he do to you?"

Shisui-sensei smiled for the first time, a bitter cant to his mouth that Sakura wished she hadn't seen. "He experimented on me. Cut me open, injected me with - well, you don't need to know the details," he cut himself off wryly. "But he had me two, almost three years. When I was rescued I was in bad shape, and I needed a lot of serious medical care. They brought me to Tsunade-sama and her apprentice, Shizune."

He crumbled the soiled bandage in his hands. "It took me a long time to recover," he said quietly. "To be able to sit up, to mold chakra, to walk and run. I stayed at the base in Yu, and to keep me busy, Shizune taught me a little of what she knew of healing."

"That's cool," Sakura offered. "You must be pretty good at it."

Shisui-sensei snorted. "Kami, no. Probably just as much as Hatake-taichou." He let just a hint of the green chakra envelop his hand. "To be good at medical jutsu, your chakra control has to be incredible. Mine's good - " he winked at Sakura with the missing eye so obviously she could tell what he was trying to do under his hitai-ate, and she giggled, " - but I'll never be able to do more than diagnostics, and maybe a little healing." He paused. "Why, are you interested in learning?"

"No," Sakura said dismissively. "I'm going to be a fighter, not a doctor."

Shisui-sensei sighed. "Ah, well. I think Haku-kun might be interested. Let me know if you change your mind." He tapped her on the nose. "You're all right to move back to the kids den, if you want," he declared. "Let me or San or one of the other sensei know if you feel dizzy or nauseated or anything, yeah?"

"Okay," Sakura agreed, and accepted his hand up. "Thanks, Shisui-sensei."

"No problem, kid," said Shisui-sensei, and ruffled her hair.

"Sakura-chan!" Naruto cheered, as he barged into the den not an hour later, arms flailing. "You're back!" He made as if to tackle her, and Sasuke tripped him neatly, sending him staggering past the bed stacks.

"Don't touch her, idiot, she's still hurt," he said, rolling his eyes.

Sakura smiled. "Hi," she said, swinging her legs from her bottom bunk. "How was training?"

Naruto groaned dramatically, throwing himself to the ground. "The worst! Itachi-sensei just keeps making us do the same thing Zabuza-sensei did, except he just stands there and silently watches us fall off trees all day instead of yelling at us like Zabuza-sensei does."

"You keep falling off trees," Sasuke corrected, crossing his arms. "I'm doing fine. Plus, he's teaching us ninjutsu."

Naruto stuck his tongue out at the other boy. "Wait 'til Sakura-chan comes back to kick your ass."

"Are you coming to training tomorrow?" Sasuke asked, ignoring their blond teammate.

"No," Sakura said regretfully. "Shisui-sensei said I need to take it easy for a bit. But I can come watch."

"Awesome!" Naruto cheered. "Do you know what Itachi-sensei's going to teach you? He showed me this totally cool fuuton that's even cooler than Temari-nee's, and he says he'll teach it to me as soon as I can walk on water!"

"So, never," Sasuke muttered under his breath.

"Shut up, bastard!" Naruto growled, sitting up to glare at their teammate. "I will too get it!"

"You can't even climb a tree yet," Sasuke pointed out smugly. "I can spar in the trees and I'm starting water-walking tomorrow."

"Itachi-sensei said my strengths are somewhere else," Naruto fired back. "And I'll beat you in no time!"

"Aniki also said that you have to get it quickly or else we have to leave you in Tetsu like a civilian when we go fight Kiri," Sasuke sniffed.

"I'm not a civilian! I'm going to be the best shinobi in Hana-ha, just wait!" Naruto fumed.

"Boys," Sakura said sweetly, taking advantage of the fact that they had to be nice to her while she was injured, "are we forgetting which member of this team is already sparring on water?"

Naruto whipped around, a distinctly betrayed expression on his face. Behind him, Sasuke looked vaguely offended. "Ugh," Naruto complained. "We'll catch up to you before you're back, Sakura-chan!"

Sakura was kind of afraid of that, but she smiled nonetheless.

"Hey, are you hungry?" Naruto blurted. "Gaara's team is making moose soup."

"Sure," Sakura agreed, even as she saw Sasuke's nose wrinkle from the corner of her eye. Unfortunately for him, Sasuke had never been too fond of moose. There were at least three dozen meals' worth of moose meat left in cold storage.

She swayed a little as she stood, but no nausea came rushing up, so she followed her teammates back out of the sleeping den carefully.

At the fire pit, Gaara stirred the contents of a large metal pot with an expression of intense concentration pasted on his face - one that uncomfortably resembled what Sakura privately called his hunting face.

"S-sakura," Hinata greeted warmly, setting down the knife she'd be using to reduce a small mountain of potatoes into neat chunks. "It's g-good to s-see you w-walking a-around again."

Sakura smiled. "Thanks," she said, touching the scabbed-over cut on the side of her head absently. "Shisui-sensei really helped."

"It seems Shisui-sensei is a man of varied skills," Sai noted, setting down his load of firewood. "Itachi-sensei speaks highly of him, and wishes his assistance in teaching our team infiltration tactics, and combat as well."

"Cool," Naruto enthused. "So are you going to sneak into enemy territory and steal their secrets and stuff?"

"Likely not," Sai said blandly, reaching over for a bag of rice and tipping it into Gaara's pot. "As genin, our teams would all be kept away from the battlefields, not to mention enemy territory, if at all possible."

Sakura absently turned over the idea of genin in her mind. It'd been her goal when she first entered the Academy, but now that she was maybe officially genin, it felt surreal that she was going to fight and maybe kill - or be killed by - an actual enemy.

"We'll fight," Sasuke said darkly. "No matter what."

"Yeah!" Naruto agreed. "We'll be so strong that they have to let us fight!"

"I don't think - " Sai began, and Sakura tuned out the rest of the argument in favor of picking her way next to Hinata.

"C-careful." Hinata reached out to steady her as she wobbled.

"Thanks," said Sakura gratefully, sitting down a little hard. "I'm still a little shaky."

Hinata bit her lip as she turned to slide her small mountain of chopped potatoes into Gaara's pot. Her teammate barely acknowledged the change except to stir a little more vigorously. "D-does it s-still h-hurt?"

"Just a migraine," Sakura said tiredly. She could feel her eyes unfocusing a little, but she dragged them back to Hinata's face with effort. "What does Itachi-sensei have planned for you?" she asked curiously.

"A-ano - " Hinata ducked her head. "O-observation, i-impersonation, and f-fighting b-blind."

Sakura's eyes widened. "Fighting blind?" she asked incredulously. "Why would he want you to do that when you have a doujutsu?"

Hinata shifted a handful of onions onto the piece of wood that functioned as a chopping board. "I-it's because the B-byakugan is t-too d-distinctive and d-dangerous," she explained. "I-I have to c-cover it w-when I l-leave here, a-and if w-we a-are ever a-ambushed, I-I n-need to be a-able to r-react w-without my s-sight. Shisui-sensei's g-going to have N-Neji-niisan do the s-same."

"That makes sense," Sakura said slowly. Before Hana-ha had picked them up, Hinata had often made her way around blindfolded - but there was a big difference between walking blind and fighting blind. "Have you tried it yet?"

Hinata bit her lip. "O-once," she said, slicing through the onions precisely. "I-it didn't g-go very w-well."

"You just need practice," Sakura said confidently. "I can't even walk in a straight line with my eyes closed, so you're way good at it already."

"M-maybe," said Hinata, and added the onions to Gaara's pot.

"Definitely," Sakura corrected, and Hinata smiled a little.

"D-do you k-know what I-Itachi-sensei is g-going to t-teach you?" she asked.

Sakura sighed. "Not really," she admitted. "I don't have enough chakra for a lot of ninjutsu and I'm not fast enough or strong enough for taijutsu. Maybe genjutsu."

"I-I think y-you would b-be g-good at t-that," Hinata offered. "Y-your c-chakra c-control is r-really g-good."

"You think?" Sakura leaned back, propping herself up on her elbows. "It seems a little, I don't know, like hiding in the middle of battle. I'd rather be in the thick of things."

"W-we're s-shinobi," Hinata said firmly. "B-being sneaky i-is p-part of b-being a ninja."

Sakura hummed agreement, but she could feel her eyelids drooping again. The soup smelled good, but despite convincing herself that she really did want to try it, Sakura let herself lie back slowly on the ground and drift off.

She woke up when it was full dark again, moonlight reflecting off the snow outside and filtering into the sleeping den. Someone had carried her back inside and wrapped her in her cloak, which was a little embarrassing. She shifted upright carefully. Above her, Naruto's arm flopped over the side of his bunk as he snored.

Her stomach growled. She took a cautious step forward, then another. From the corner of her eye, eerie eyes glowed in the darkness. She turned to meet Gaara's unblinking stare.

"Awake," he noted passively, not moving from his cross-legged position on his top bunk.

"Yeah." Sakura tried to smile. "I'm a bit hungry."

He regarded her in silence long enough for her to feel the stirrings of panic. "Nee-chan left you soup outside," he said finally.

"Oh," said Sakura, surprised. "That's - that's nice of her."

"Yes," Gaara agreed simply.

Sakura fidgeted. "Do you - do you want to come outside?" she offered.

Gaara tilted his head. "Okay," he said finally, and hopped off the stack lightly, landing on the dirt floor noiselessly. Sakura smiled hesitantly as he turned to lead the way out of the den.

Nestled in the glowing embers of the cooking fire was a small metal pot. Sakura fished it out gingerly, tucking her cloak beneath her so she wouldn't sit directly on the snow. Silently, Gaara offered her a spoon, then sat down to watch her eat.

From the side of the cliff, a shadow dropped down. Sakura blinked at it, but Gaara continued to stare at her, unconcerned. She spooned another bite of moose into her mouth.

The captain slipped out of the darkness, padding up to her and Gaara on noiseless feet. Moonlight glinted dully off his shock of silver hair, catching on the vambraces he wore on his forearm. He moved slowly but surely, a hunter's easy prowl. Sakura watched him warily, flinching away involuntarily when he reached out a hand.

He paused, hand outstretched. "Do you mind?" the captain asked, voice low. "I wanted to check your injury."

"Uh, go ahead," Sakura said, and forced herself to hold still as the shinobi held a glowing hand over her head.

"You'll live," he said, letting the chakra fade. "Limit your chakra use, and don't do anything physically strenuous."

Sakura gave him a weak smile. "Yes, sir," she said.

He didn't fade back into the shadows like Sakura had expected. Instead, he spat a small flame at the remains of the fire and let it flare back to life. "Your training," he said. "How is it?"

Sakura glanced at Gaara, who blinked back at her.

"It is useful," Gaara said, before Sakura could respond.

"Yeah," Sakura added. "Zabuza-sensei's a good teacher."

The captain nodded almost absently. "And are you both satisfied here? Sakura, the deadline for remaining with Hana-ha passed while you were injured. Is this still the path you want to take?"

Sakura set down her bowl, staring at her half-finished soup. Was he only asking her because, of all their little group, she was the only civilian-born? Not a jinchuuriki, not handpicked for Anbu, not from a shinobi clan. She was the only one who could walk away, clean, and not be hunted.

And maybe the captain knew that, and after the initial wave of indignation, Sakura did feel a little grateful. "Yes," Sakura said, remembering what she'd told San before. "I'm sure."

"I will not leave," Gaara agreed placidly.

The captain said nothing, but nodded - just a shallow dip of his head. "Here," he said at last. "Something both of you can learn."

Curiously, Sakura watched the man run his hands through seals slowly: Bear, Boar, Tiger, Cat, Tiger… "Kasumi Juusha no Jutsu," the captain announced.

Sakura felt her heart rate kick up as black figures emerged from the shadows, looming over them from the edges of the fire. Gaara tensed, eyes widening and narrowing in turn as they darted from figure to figure.

"It's a genjutsu," the captain said soothingly, and Sakura let her muscles relax. "They won't hurt you. It's called the Mist Servant Technique," he narrated, as the figures examined their own hands, stretching out their limbs in an exploration of movement. "It doesn't take a lot of chakra, and it likely won't work on a genjutsu specialist, but you can supplement it with thrown projectiles. If you ever need a distraction for a quick retreat, or to prepare another jutsu, this is a good option." He let the figures melt back into shadows with a flick of his hand. "Give it a try, Sakura. But stop right away if you feel dizzy or your head starts hurting."

"Hai," said Sakura, and frowned in concentration as her hands formed the seals hesitantly. "Kasumi Juusha no Jutsu," she repeated, and willed the shadows to take shape. A shadowy figure with her silhouette dragged itself from beneath the stack of firewood. Another, only half-formed and trailing inky black from one arm and leg, detached from a dip in the snow.

"Good," said the captain. "Now, release the genjutsu. Your chakra is more precarious with that concussion."

Sakura did as instructed, allowing the illusion to fade. The persistent headache throbbing at the back of her skull briefly intensified, then ebbed, and she winced.

"Sakura?" the captain asked mildly.

"I'm okay, sir," she said. "I don't think I'll try it again, though."

The captain eyed her with sharp eyes, then nodded. "Gaara?" he prompted. "Why don't you try the genjutsu?"

The younger boy frowned, directing his inscrutable stare at Sakura and the captain in turn. Clumsily, he went through the seals and narrowed his eyes. Sakura felt his chakra surge.

All around the fire, the shadows seethed and writhed, never quite forming, and falling apart only to be absorbed by another. Gaara scowled thunderously and scattered the illusion in another burst of chakra.

"Too much chakra, not enough control," the captain noted critically, "though a strong first attempt. Again. Visualize the genjutsu you want to form more clearly and keep a tighter grip on your chakra."

Face frozen in a rictus of a snarl, Gaara cast another - then a second, then a third. Formless shadows morphed into vague figures, and finally, in the murky darkness beyond the fire, a small figure - a shadow like Gaara - stepped forth. Then another, bigger one, towering over the first. This one, with its four legs and pointed muzzle and pointier ears, was clearly not human.

Sakura sucked in an involuntary gasp as it prowled the edge of the fire, its head snapping restlessly from side to side.

"Ah," said the captain thoughtfully. "Good progress, Gaara. However, this should only be a technique you use when you do not mind your enemy knows who you are."

Strangely, Gaara did not look overly frustrated at this - instead, he smiled, like a sated cat showing its fangs.

Sakura tried not to let the envy show on her face. It must be nice, to have so many options that he could pick and choose which techniques he used in battle. She stared down at her hands.

What did she have? Some shoddy taijutsu, halfway decent kunai-throwing, the most basic ninjutsu the Academy could teach, and now about twenty percent of a genjutsu that she couldn't even practice without giving herself a migraine. Sakura's options were limited and decreasing fast.

Itachi-sensei may have had none of the even rudimentary medical training Shisui-sensei or the captain had, but that didn't stop him from forbidding Sakura-chan to so much as skip a pebble across the lake where Sasuke was taking his first wobbly steps across the water. He glanced over when Sakura shifted restlessly from her snow-covered rock at the water's edge. "I will not risk your health over something as trivial as training on a day you should be recovering from a traumatic brain injury," he repeated

"Sensei," Sakura said mutinously. "The captain let me try a genjutsu last night."

"Perhaps," Itachi-sensei said placidly, hands loose at his side as he balanced easily on the gently bobbing lake. "However, he would be able to treat you if your condition worsened, and I would not."

Sakura narrowed her eyes and glared out at Sasuke, who lost his footing and fell flailing into the icy lake with a yelp. He clawed his way out onto a sheet of ice, scrabbling for purchase. Itachi-sensei barely blinked as Sasuke shook his hair out like one of the wolves. Sakura watched enviously. Further down the shoreline, Itachi-sensei's clone supervised his own team's taijutsu drills.

"Scenario," Itachi-sensei said, almost absently, breaking her out of her observations. "Your three-membered team is in a building. You see unknown hostiles approaching from outside. You have one member injured and believe the hostiles have a chakra sensor. How do you proceed?"

Settling her chin in her hand, Sakura frowned. "Public building? How many stories? Where are the exits?"

"Inn," answered Itachi-sensei, finally turning to regard her with implacable eyes. "Six stories. Windows and hallway doors in all rented rooms, main front entrance, one window, two back exits."

Sakura hesitated. "Civilians?"

"Twelve in the front room, three in the back room and kitchen, various in the rented rooms."

Sakura chewed her lip. "Nature of the injury?"

"Leg wound, muscle, nothing broken, heavy bleeding." Itachi-sensei returned his gaze to Sasuke, who bobbed precariously with one hand flailing.

"Stabilize the wound first," said Sakura at last. "Bind it securely enough that the blood doesn't leak.' She tapped her fingers one after the other. "Split up the team," she decided. "I open a second-story window, send a bunshin, go out a fourth-story window up onto the roof. Teammates repress their chakra signatures and go out the front door, blend in with the crowd on the ground."

"Minimal contact with civilians," Itachi-sensei noted. "However, acting as a diversion greatly increases the chances of your death. If one of you is to die, would it not make sense for the injured member to act as diversion to increase the chances of the rest of the team's survival?"

"No!" exclaimed Sakura, aghast, then frowned.

"Why?" Itachi-sensei prompted.

Sakura could feel the beginnings of a headache throbbing at her temples. "I - I can't leave behind an injured teammate," she stuttered.

"So instead, your team will be down one member with another injured member?" Itachi-sensei countered calmly.

"Not if I get away without them catching me," Sakura defended.

"How will you evade the chakra sensor?" On the lake, Sasuke plunged into the lake once again with a loud crash of splintering ice, and Itachi-sensei's eyes flickered in that direction until his brother's head broke the surface.

Sakura narrowed her eyes. "A chakra sensor shouldn't be able to distinguish me from a bunshin if I match my chakra output to a clone's," she said thoughtfully. "Once I'm out, I'll mass produce the clones and send them everywhere - civilian crowds, public buildings, rooftops. It would give me time to lose them and rendezvous with my team or set up a trap."

Itachi-sensei nodded once, thoughtfully. "Remember," he said. "Bunshin don't leave tracks or scent. If you commit to a plan like this, you must be assured of success, or your team will be severely disadvantaged."

Sakura blew out a harsh breath, fingers coming up instinctively to the sides of her head.

"That is enough for now," Itachi-sensei said immediately. "Do not aggravate your injury."

"Hai," Sakura murmured, too worn to even argue. Through her fingers, she watched Sasuke take a victorious stride across the water, then another and another until he reached their sensei.

"What's wrong with her?" he muttered, voice pitched low.

"Nothing," Sakura grumbled.

"A side effect of the concussion," Itachi-sensei answered, as if she hadn't spoken. "Wait here a moment while I collect Naruto."

Sasuke shoved his hands awkwardly into his pocket as he shivered. "Any better?" he asked gruffly, as Itachi-sensei slipped away.

Sakura sighed, closing her eyes briefly. "It just feels the same," she said. "Headaches, on and off."

"Sorry," he said shiftily. Sakura could feel the hum of his chakra as he dried himself and his clothes off.

"It was just a training accident," Sakura reminded him, shifting around to hand him his cloak, abandoned in the snow next to her while he trained. He took it, slinging it around his shoulders and huddling into its folds.

He shrugged, sitting down next to her, and they watched the chunks of ice bob up and down on the lake. On the far side, Temari's team sparred, little black figures darting and pouncing across the water.

"Munashii," said Sasuke.

"What?"

"Empty," he repeated slowly, glancing over like her stupid concussion might have affected her comprehension. "In Konoha, as genin, we would have the hitai-ate and start going on missions, but here - it's still more of the same. Training. It feels empty."

"We haven't left San's forest since we got here," Sakura agreed. "The sensei keep talking about the war, but we've never seen it."

Sasuke skipped a rock across the surface of the water with a little more force than necessary. "We will," he said ominously. "The whole pack will."

A teasing smile tugged at the corner of Sakura's mouth. "Pack?" she echoed.

Sasuke scowled. "Shut up. San keeps calling us that."

"San was literally raised by wolves," Sakura pointed out. "I like it, though," she added, almost as an afterthought.

Sasuke snorted. "You sleep in San's den for three days and that's what happens."

"Oh, shut up," Sakura grumbed.

"Yeah, shut up," Naruto chimed in, and instantly Sasuke's face darkened into a glower.

"You don't even know what we're talking about, idiot," he snarled.

"It is your turn on meal rotation," Itachi-sensei said serenely over Naruto's, "Yeah? Fight me, bastard!" "I trust you two boys will be able to handle it while I escort Sakura back to base camp."

"Sure, whatever," said Sasuke, tucking his cloak around him more securely. Itachi-sensei levered him with a look, and Sasuke blew out a sigh. "Yes, sensei ," he amended grumpily.

"Hai!" Naruto agreed, abandoning his feud with Sasuke as soon as it'd started.

"Sakura?" Itachi-sensei prompted.

Sakura sighed. "Coming," she said, and brushed off Naruto's overly enthusiastic attempts to help her up.

It was far too early for any of the other teams to finish training. The captain, however, was holding conference at the edge of the clearing with a huddle of his ninken and San with her wolves.

Sakura knew better than to pry, and let Itachi-sensei herd her not-so-subtly to the pack's den, following the trail he thoughtfully broke through the snow, since he wouldn't let her walk on top of it. He stood aside to let her in first.

Her cloak weighed heavy on her shoulders, twice as heavy today. She staggered a little as she shrugged it off, and when she tried to toss it on her bunk, it slid half-off.

But now that it was off, she shivered, the thin fabric and deerskin shirt an insufficient defense against the cold seeping in from the cave entrance.

"Lie down," Itachi-sensei said, and Sakura peered up to watch him make his way over.

Obediently, she slumped into her bunk, and Itachi-sensei folded her cloak over her with clinical precision. "I should help my team," she protested weakly. "I know I can't hunt, but I should - start the fire or boil water."

"Later," Itachi-sensei said implacably, and despite herself - despite the fact that she was acting like a useless little civilian - Sakura felt her eyelids close.

"Sakura?" Temari's voice filtered through the fog of sleep, dragging Sakura unwillingly to the surface. She resisted the urge to curl up and hide until the older girl left, shrink away from her.

Nevertheless, she forced her eyes open and blinked blearily at Temari. Golden rays filtered weekly into the mouth of the den. "It's time for dinner," the older girl informed her, peeling back Sakura's cloak. "Come on, I'll help you up."

Sakura was sick and tired of needing help just to crawl out of bed, and to need Temari's help of all people, but she accepted the older girl's hand, swaying on her feet just a little as Temari draped her cloak around her shoulders.

"Sakura-chan!" Naruto cheered. A half-chewed something was in his mouth. With an impressively tolerant expression, Gaara leaned away from him.

"Chew with your mouth closed," Temari admonished, and guided Sakura to a seat on a log next to Haku - rare, for him to eat with the pack. Sakura blinked at the older boy when he offered her a small smile.

"Stay," Temari told Sakura, drawing back her attention. "I'll get your food."

Sakura smiled weakly. "Thanks," she managed. A shuffle at her feet - a narrow muzzle shoved itself into Sakura's lap, and she blinked down at Guruko's liquid eyes. "Hi," said Sakura, hand coming up instinctively to rub the ninken's forehead. "Is the captain working you hard?"

Guruko whined agreement, eyes half-closing in contentment.

"He and Bisuke are accompanying myself and Zabuza-san on a mission tomorrow evening," Haku said unexpectedly.

"Another mission?" Sakura asked, surprised, and accepted a bowl from Temari. "He's not even back yet, and the last one you went on with him was - oh. That was six days ago."

"Yes," Haku agreed. "Zabuza-san will be back within a few hours. We are continuing to monitor movement on the eastern coast of Hi while the Kiri insurgents battle the loyalists for control of that sea."

"Maybe you should bring a set of eyes that can see everything," Neji said pointedly on Sakura's other side.

"Hey." Temari snapped her fingers warningly at Neji, who turned his glower in her direction.

"Itachi-sensei told Zabuza-san he will bring the entire team on his reconnaissance mission after competence in basic shinobi arts is demonstrated," Haku said, unperturbed. "He thinks perhaps next month."

Deafening silence. Even Naruto was startled out of his one-sided conversation with Gaara and Sasuke. Sakura choked down a bite of bird, tears pricking her eyes when it caught in her throat. Guruko blinked concerned eyes up at her.

"N-Next month?" Hinata said.

"Perhaps," Haku repeated.

Sakura's eyes darted to Temari, whose eyes first widened, then narrowed. Neji's face twisted into a thoughtful scowl, Sai's into a pensive expression. Naruto and Sasuke exchanged glances.

"Outside of San's forest?" asked Sasuke cautiously.

"I believe so," said Haku.

"That," Naruto breathed, "is so cool . You're going to be the first ones on a real mission! A real team mission !" Beside him, Gaara narrowed his eyes at Temari.

Temari pursed her lips. "I see," she said. "Are all the sensei preparing to begin bringing their teams on missions?"

"Yes," Haku said simply.

Hinata covered her mouth with her hand. Naruto hooted, slapping his hand against a slightly less enthusiastic Sasuke's. Sakura took a deep breath, oblivious to Guruko's curious stare.

In, out. This was Sakura's world, changing, again.

Sakura was a clever girl. Since her father's death, her cleverness kept her alive. She kept her mouth shut, and she watched, filing away all that information neatly into her brain. And she learned.

Itachi-sensei's team was by far the most ready for the missions, the coming war - even moreso than the rest of the pack may have known, judging by Naruto's whining. Sakura, though - Sakura knew better. Feared them, even, on days when she was tired and lonely and felt the years of being hunted wearing on her.

But fear - fear was fine. Fear was a tool that kept a shinobi alive.

This is what Sakura knew about Yuki Ichizoku no Haku:

Haku was the kind of metaphorical diamond one might find in a coal mine. He was the last echo of a dead clan with a prodigious elemental genkai kekkei, self-taught in everything his ice could do. He possessed a naturally brilliant mind, and regularly created his own jutsu.

He was faster than a striking snake, his throw was deadly accurate, and he could hit a flying bird precisely in the eye with a senbon. Haku could track a rabbit in a snowstorm, identify a bird by the way it beat its wings.

In Kiri, he was hated and feared for his genkai-kekkei; in Konoha he would have been venerated and coveted. In any life, in any country, Haku would always make a fantastic shinobi.

This is how Sakura knew to be afraid of Haku:

Haku was the kindest person Sakura had ever met. His compassion was genuine, and he honestly, truly wanted to help everybody. His eyes were warm and his smile pure.

But more than anything, he was loyal to Zabuza-sensei.

And for him, Haku could lock away that kindness in the blink of an eye and leave behind nothing but a blank mask.

Haku's special talent was killing, and he was especially gifted at it.

When Haku was five, he killed his father and almost every able-bodied man in his village. Zabuza-sensei picked him up on the side of the road, and within another two, three, four years, Haku was a Kiri hunter-nin.

When Zabuza-sensei attempted to kill the Mizukage, Haku followed him. When Zabuza-sensei raided a human experimentation facility during what was supposed to be a human trafficking A-rank, Haku followed him. When Zabuza-sensei was captured during the mission by Konoha's most notorious Sannin, Haku found the only people that would even consider helping, or even stand a chance of helping: Reiketsu Kakashi and Uchiha Itachi, the Hanabi-ha.

And as long as Zabuza-sensei was a part of Hanabi-ha, Haku would too.

But if Zabuza-sensei told Haku to kill any one of them, Sakura knew he would do it.

This is how Sakura met Haku:

Two years on the run, and Neko-sensei left the pack in Oshino - the last time Sakura had seen her or Hanabi. Two years of ambushes, false alarms, and Temari called a Code Red: a Code 2-Red-2, recognition by a family member.

In the flurry of chaos that happened, Sakura met first Itachi-sensei, then the captain. In the forests of Taki, fleeing again (nothing new), Sakura met Shisui-sensei and Zabuza-sensei and Haku.

Shisui-sensei was weary good nature and sardonic humor and tousled hair. Zabuza-sensei was rough and sharp edges and towering height. Haku was light and lithe and coiled grace in his shadow.

Haku offered her a drink of water from his canteen, sat down next to her after a long day of travel, and asked her what her name was.

Haku was the first member of Hana-ha who smiled at her, and for the first time since Neko-sensei had left them, Sakura had felt safe.

This is what Sakura knew about Hyuuga Neji:

Neji was a genius. He should have been the jewel of the Hyuuga Clan in Konoha, its greatest shinobi in a clan of great shinobi in this generation. Neji never needed more than once to learn a lesson; there was never a taijutsu kata that took him more than a day to perfect, never a target he couldn't hit, and never was his chakra anything less than impeccably controlled.

However, Hyuuga Neji was born as a second-class citizen and he knew would never be anything more than a servant.

He could have been chosen for the Command Corps, sure. He could have made jounin, or joined the Anbu - he could even have risen as high as Joint Forces Commander, second only to the Hokage. But he would never be Hokage, and in his Clan, he would always be subordinate.

Neji did not fight this. The last lesson his father taught was obedience, and Neji never needed more than once to learn a lesson.

Instead, he kept his head down and trained. He trained even before he enrolled in the Academy, and when he did enroll, he ranked first in his class in every subject without fail. He was six and already one of the most promising shinobi of his generation.

This is how Sakura knew to be afraid of Neji:

The Clan accelerated his Juuken training. Neji did not protest. The Clan assigned him to take up traditional Branch guard shifts in the clan compound. Neji did not protest. The Clan appointed him a personal bodyguard to the heiress, his younger cousin. Neji did not protest.

Hinata was everything that Neji was not: privileged, timid, and - to put it nicely - fragile. She was taught the secret techniques of the Main House, waited on, guarded at all times. But where Neji learned quickly, Hinata took twice, three times as long to learn the same half as well. When she entered the Academy, the only subject she ranked first in was taijutsu, and even then, only among the kunoichi. Instead of standing tall and proud, she wilted.

When she came of age, Hyuuga Hinata would become the next Head of the illustrious Hyuuga Clan, famed throughout the Elemental Lands as a clan of proud shinobi with one of the strongest doujutsu to exist. And Neji would be at her shoulder, at her heels.

Neji did not protest, but he resented.

His anger burned slow, festering, and ignited in a flash.

Neji would give his life for Hyuuga Hinata, and he would forever resent her for it.

The whole pack - and San, and the sensei - had watched Neji almost kill Hinata. Had seen the smoldering hatred so carefully hidden, packed beneath his veneer of cool control. Killing intent was something the shinobi Academies and sensei cultivated carefully, nurtured. But Neji's past had done that for him tenfold.

This is how Sakura met Neji:

Still reeling from her father's murder, Sakura had huddled in a tiny room with Sai and Naruto, all three muddy and blood-splattered. There was no bathroom in the Anbu bolt-hole Sai had dragged them into, just a covered bucket. The only food was dried and packaged and hard as rock.

Then Neko-sensei had shoved her way in and Sai had almost impaled her, crouching defensively in front of Sakura as she huddled uselessly in the corner and Naruto, who guarded her with his own body. And behind her had been a hard-eyed eight-year-old Neji glaring white eyes at them with an actual baby cradled in his arms. And behind him was Hinata and Sasuke - the former terrified, the latter fierce.

Eight of them crammed into an Anbu bolt-hole. It wasn't safe.

Hi no Kuni was a big country, but in the wake of Danzo's upheaval, none of it was safe.

Hinata, Sasuke, Hanabi - each of them Main House blood, each in the direct line of succession. Naruto - jinchuuriki, the greatest weapon in Konoha's possession. Them, Neko-sensei was honor-bound and duty-bound to protect, to keep away from the usurper's clutches.

Sai, Neji - both prodigies, already blooded, already pressed into duty for village or for clan. Them, Neko-sensei could lean on to protect her four charges.

Sakura, however - civilian, worthless, more brain than brawn. Her, Neko-sensei had no use for. Neko-sensei should have left her behind, wanted to even, for the good of the mission.

But Naruto resisted so adamantly, so fervently, that even Sai had somewhat hesitantly sided with him.

"Bring her," Neji had snapped. "We'll waste less time if they come willingly."

And Sakura had shrunken back at him and his cold eyes, but Neko-sensei agreed. When they left, they left as eight.

It took eight weeks before Sakura willingly spoke to Neji.

This is what Sakura knew about Sabaku no Temari:

Temari was strong. The firstborn of the Yondaime Kazekage, she was a prodigy from the moment she stepped into a training ring. Smart, fast, a killer instinct - she had all the makings of a fearsome ninja, and that was before she started picking up elemental jutsu while still in the Academy.

However, she was also a kunoichi in a shinobi's world and even at nine years old Temari was no fool.

Sunagakure's only female Anbu were part of the seduction-infiltration division, and its few female jounin had all been relegated to desk jobs. Temari didn't want a desk job. She certainly didn't want to get stuck working in a hospital or playing nice as an ambassador due to her high political status as the Kazekage's daughter.

She wanted to be a field commander, or join Anbu and complete S-rank missions. She wanted to be the youngest jounin, like the legendary ninja she read about in her textbooks, who had been promoted at thirteen and fourteen and fifteen.

But she was nine and could have made genin in her sleep a year ago, and her tutor told her to "quit being so impatient. You won't be even chunin for another six years at least."

Because her genin team would be her brothers, and she wouldn't be allowed to enter the chuunin exams until they were ready. Gaara was six, and still couldn't control the Shukaku.

When she had made chuunin, she would be encouraged to retire and enter a political marriage.

But Temari didn't want that. She was too smart for her own good, too strong, too fast. She didn't master her first fuuton ninjutsu at eight for her own village to betray her.

She left.

She left, with Gaara.

She was wasted in Suna.

This is how Sakura knew to be afraid of Temari:

No matter how prodigious she was, Temari knew wouldn't last a day outside Suna on her own without being killed or retrieved. And she knew her youngest brother, who was for all intents and purposes a living weapon with very limited control, could level the village either with intent or with carelessness. She was afraid of him, yes, but she needed him.

It was almost laughably easy to get her youngest brother to trust her. She started with a smile.

He was desperately lonely and starving for affection, and when she began showing interest in him, he soaked it up like the desert after rainfall. He was so painfully earnest and eager to please - and he tried so, so hard not to hurt her. He didn't succeed, of course. His control was imperfect, and broke Temari's arm on two separate occasions, and once three ribs when he couldn't hold back the demon.

"You need to do better, otouto," she told him the second time after she got back from the hospital, arm wrapped in plaster, and his eyes widened at the address. "What if you kill me on accident? You'll be lonely again."

And of course, he tried harder after that.

And then their uncle tried to kill her, or maybe him - Sakura wasn't too clear on this part - and Gaara perfected his control that night. He protected her. That was the night they left Suna for good. He was seven, she was ten.

Temari didn't tell Sakura all of this, not directly. But Sakura was clever, too smart for her own good even, and pieced the story together from the scraps the older girl let slip.

"I am the one that loves you," she'd heard the older girl whisper to Gaara at night, and even Sakura could tell he believed her. And perhaps that was even true, but that was unimportant.

They hadn't been let go easy - their village had sent Anbu to retrieve or kill them. Eventually, they stopped coming, after Gaara left their corpses twisted and bloodied or pureed in their wake.

This was how Sakura met Temari:

They were in the Land of Rivers, maybe, when Naruto came back to the decrepit toolshed they were staying in with a tiny boy with bizarre dark rings around his eyes and rust-red hair and a stare that could unnerve the Shinigami himself. Sakura wasn't entirely sure how Naruto managed to befriend the homicidal little boy and from the expression on his face Gaara didn't know either, but stay he did. And with him came Temari.

But Gaara was on his best behavior and so was she, and over the next year Neko-sensei let them learn their story as she allowed them to learn a little of her and Gaara's.

But Sakura wasn't fooled. For all that both Sand siblings played up Gaara's bloodlust, she knew that it was Temari that was the dangerous one, the ruthless one. Temari was the puppeteer in the relationship and Gaara followed her lead.

Maybe the others didn't see it beneath the caring older sister persona, but Sakura knew: Sabaku no Temari was a force to be reckoned with.

Whirling cloak and scattered snowflakes. Sakura pounced across the top of the snow, gleeful in finally being allowed to do more physically strenuous activity after two weeks of light jogging at most. Naruto blew past, his own cloak steaming out behind him, and Sakura gave chase.

"Can't catch me!" Naruto crowed gleefully, turning his head to peek over his shoulder at her with mischievous eyes.

Sakura smiled. "Is that a challenge?" she called, leaping nimbly over a rocky outcropping. She put on a burst of speed as his control slipped, sending him staggering as one foot broke through the crust of the snow.

"Got you!" Sakura's punch caught him on the shoulder as he tried to dodge clumsily, sending him face first into the snowbank. She sped away before he could tag her back, veering out onto the icy river.

"Aw, Sakura-chan," Naruto complained, stopping his charge just short of the water's edge.

Sakura smiled sweetly, a good three meters from the riverbank. "What's the matter, Naruto?" She took one step towards him teasingly, then another.

Naruto growled wordlessly, pacing back and forth.

Sakura yelped as Naruto took a flying leap, diving sideways as her teammate crashed flailing into the icy water. "Naruto!" she cried, aghast, as his head popped out of the water, gasping.

"What an idiot," Sasuke muttered, striding out on top of the water with surprisingly stable steps. He reached out and hauled Naruto bodily out of the water by the arm, tossing him to the shore.

Naruto reacted about the same as if one had done the same to a drenched cat: yowled protestations and flailing of limbs. "What the hell?" he demanded.

Sasuke crossed his arms. "You jumped into a half-frozen river without knowing how to walk on water," he pointed out. "And you can barely swim."

"I was fine!" Naruto insisted.

"Brats," interjected Zabuza-sensei before their argument could escalate into a full-on fight, slouching languidly behind Naruto as if he'd always been there. "Get over here, shut your traps. We've got a briefing or whatever."

Naruto huffed as Sakura and Sasuke made their way towards the edge of the river. "We did the briefing yesterday," he complained.

"We did?" Sakura said pointedly. Naruto and Sasuke looked vaguely guilty.

"These two brats wanted to know what we were doing today," Zabuza-sensei drawled, cheerfully throwing her two teammates under the bus, "so I told them. It's you versus Itachi's team."

Sakura made a face and folded her arms across her chest. The headaches were nearly gone, but physically, she still tired easily. "So, it's a joint exercise with Team Sa-Ga-Hi," she said.

"That's a terrible name," Sasuke muttered under his breath.

"The wolf-girl's going to be your target. Client. Whatever," said Zabuza-sensei. "She wants you to guard her when she goes from the western caves to the tallest pine on the eastern shore of the lake. The client will be travelling on foot, blah, blah, and you are to protect her and her wares from potential bandits."

"Gaara's team!" Naruto chimed it.

"Yes," Sasuke said dryly. "But we're not supposed to know that."

"Wares?" Sakura repeated suspiciously.

"She's supposed to be a merchant or whatever." Zabuza-sensei shrugged and glanced towards the sun. "Quit asking questions. You have twelve minutes to get the meeting point."

"What?" Naruto cried, as Sasuke slapped at his kunai holster in a panic. "We don't have all our equipment!"

"I have mine," Sakura said smugly.

"A shinobi is always prepared," Zabuza-sensei sneered maliciously. "Guess you get to choose between meeting your client on time or getting the rest of your equipment."

"I'll meet the client," Sakura said quickly before Naruto imploded. "You two grab whatever you need and find us before we leave."

The three turned to Zabuza-sensei, who raised an eyebrow sardonically. "Your mission, your decision. Eleven minutes."

"Go," said Sasuke, and took off towards the main camp with Naruto on his heels.

Sakura really needed to get a watch. She bolted for the western caves, skimming the top of the snow as she ran. The western caves were around three kilometers away from the training hollow, and Sakura's breath was rasping harshly in her throat by the time San came into view.

"You seem a little out of breath," San noted, staring down at Sakura with no small amount of amusement as she doubled over, hands on her knees. She affected a higher voice. "I paid for a team," she said, crossing her arms ostentatiously. "Why is it only you?"

Sakura smothered a smile and straightened. "I apologize, but my team was unavoidably detained," she said, trying not to laugh. "They should be here soon."

San sniffed, scrunching up her nose. "I certainly hope so," she huffed. "I need to get my things to the tallest pine before sunset or everything is ruined."

"We're here!" Naruto announced, skidding in with a spray of snow that showered both Sakura and San.

"Real professional," muttered Sasuke, as Sakura sputtered and dashed the snow off her face.

"Intolerable!" San intoned, and Naruto and Sasuke stared at her as if she had grown an extra pair of ears. "I demand you show me some respect!"

"She's in character," Sakura explained in an undertone as San brushed her shoulders off prissily. "We're ready to go, if you are," she said, louder.

"Am I?" Giving the trio one more gimlet-eyed glare, San hefted a large carrying rack piled high with rolled pelts onto her back. "We go," she announced imperiously. "We are scorching daylight."

"I'll take point," Sasuke said. "Sakura, stay with the client. Naruto, rearguard."

"On it!" Naruto chirped, as Sakura said, "Hai."

Sasuke bounded ahead. Sakura sprang forwards as well, only to stop when San wasn't at her shoulder. She glanced behind her.

San eyed her with a raised eyebrow and stepped forward pointedly. Her foot broke through the top of the snow and she sank. She took another pondering step. And another. "Wait for the civilian, young shinobi," said San with obvious enjoyment.

Sakura closed her eyes briefly. "Of course," she said with a strained smile.

When Naruto hadn't been able to walk on top of the snow, he had at least plowed through with the drifts enthusiastically as a charging bull moose might - it hadn't slowed him down very much. San, on the other hand, moved as quickly as a browsing cow with a lame foot.

On a regular escort mission, Sakura imagined it would be marginally more relaxed, but since they knew an ambush was coming, she felt herself jumping at shadows. The path San insisted they take cut through the forest, and Sakura eyed every creaking branch suspiciously.

Sasuke doubled back, a slight frown when he realized that Sakura and San had gone maybe a hundred meters since the mission began. He turned his frown on Sakura, who flattened her mouth and shook her head. "Clear so far," he reported at last.

"So far?" San echoed, stopping in her tracks with a mischievous glint in her eyes. "Young pup, are you telling me that it won't be clear later?"

Sakura glowered at Sasuke, who looked slightly abashed, and turned a wide-eyed look on San. "Well, you hired us to protect you," she said. "Aren't you expecting to be attacked?"

San sniffed. "Perhaps. Perhaps not," she said, and mercifully, continued plodding forward once again.

Sasuke vanished back into the trees ahead, zigzagging just in view of Sakura and San. In the back, Naruto - surprisingly silent - prowled back and forth, never straying more than three meters.

All around them, the bare trees trailed spindly shadows across the snowy floor, and Sakura's breath puffed out in little clouds of white. The day was cold and still, whatever wildlife there might normally be startled away by the crunch of San's feet through the snow.

Sakura poked her arms through the side slits in her cloak, palming a kunai in a backhanded grip. She glanced back at Naruto, but he shook her head when he met her eyes. No sign.

A full hour passed in tense silence. In that time, the team had managed to traverse almost exactly one kilometer of terrain.

Sakura's hands were beginning to go numb, so she sent a thrum of chakra through them, flexing her fingers around her kunai.

"I am tired," San declared, and swung off her carrying rack abruptly.

"What are you doing?" asked Sakura, fighting down the thrills of anticipation and panic.

"What's going on?" Naruto demanded, catching up in one large pounce.

"I am tired," San repeated primly. "I am going to take a break."

Naruto ground his teeth audibly. "You said you needed to be at the lake by sunset!" he complained. "We're really far away!"

"I cannot go on," San insisted, just as Sasuke came back.

"What's the holdup?" he muttered to Sakura.

Sakura fought the urge to sigh. "The client needs to rest," she answered.

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Fan out," he ordered. "I'll stay with the client, you two scout around the site."

Sakura seized the chance to move faster than a snail for the first time in an hour and darted into the surrounding trees, one eye on her team and San. She didn't think the other team would attack them now - more likely to surprise them on the move while they were focused on moving forward.

A soft crunch of disturbed snow caught her attention. Sakura froze, turning her head in that direction. Noiselessly, she crept towards the sound. For a brief second, she chanced a look over her shoulder, back to her team, but all was peaceful there.

She prowled forward and peered around the side of the trunk, kunai held defensively before her. She blinked once, bemused, at who she saw.

Shisui-sensei raised a hand lazily as he slouched against a tree opposite her, waggling his fingers in a greeting. "Distraction!" he told cheerfully.

"No!" Sakura growled, and whirled, flying over the snow back to where she'd left the others.

In the trees ahead, Naruto yelled in dismay, and Sakura burst from the trees in time to see Haku propel Temari and Neji out of an oversized ice mirror right in front of San, whose only response was to blink once, slowly.

Sasuke spat a massive fireball, forcing the other team to scatter, and Naruto was on Temari in a flash, meeting her kunai with his own. "You're not Gaara's team!" Naruto cried indignantly.

Temari grinned, sharklike. "Nope," she said sweetly, and knocked him bodily off his feet.

Ice senbon hissed through the air, and Sakura knocked them away, diving in front of San to block the next volley. "Get back!" she cried, herding San away from the mirror.

Neji drew his tanto, head cocked slightly, and deflected the kunai Sakura flung at him neatly despite the strip of cloth wound over his eyes. "Genjutsu: Tori no Uta!" she hissed, and Neji jerked involuntarily at the chirping birds that assailed his ears. Her next kunai sailed just past his shoulder as he ducked.

"Keep doing that!" directed Sasuke breathlessly, his hands already flickering through seals. He spat a stream of flame, and Haku jerked a hand up, a sheet of ice shooting up just in time.

"Kai," Neji growled, breaking through the illusion with a sharp pulse of chakra. Sakura hurled another kunai to keep Neji back as he advanced, drawing another in each hand as she gritted her teeth. The only other genjutsu she knew was visual - useless against a shinobi fighting blind, and doubly so for an opponent whose doujutsu could see through any genjutsu.

"Naruto, switch!" she yelled, as Temari blasted Naruto back with a precise fuuton. Naruto twisted out of his backwards tumble into a pounce, yanking Neji with him by an arm. Temari whirled after them, but Sakura was faster. "Kasumi Juusha no Jutsu!" she growled, and Temari froze, her eyes flicking at the dark figures blooming out of Sakura's genjutsu. It wouldn't hold her long.

"Hey!" Sasuke barked, and Sakura whipped around to see Haku haul a supremely unconcerned San backwards into a mirror. She lunged, but only hit the hard surface of the ice as the two vanished.

Temari turned on Naruto, blowing him backwards with another fuuton, and grabbed Neji by the shoulder. "Let's go!" she yelled, leaping for the dormant mirror they'd arrived from. Just before the two impacted the ice, Haku's hand reached out and grabbed them, pulling them in.

Sasuke's fireball hit too late - they vanished with a glint of light in the distance, and the mirror cracked, its pieces falling to the ground with a musical tinkle.

Naruto glanced at Sakura. Sakura looked at Sasuke. Sasuke eyed them both.

"What was that?" Naruto yowled.

Sasuke scowled thunderously. "Bad intel," he snarled.

"Forget that," Sakura said. "We need to get her back!"

"They're long gone," Sasuke muttered.

"Did you know Haku could do that?" Naruto demanded. "I didn't! I mean, it's super cool that he can just - "

"I didn't know he could bring others into his ice with him," Sakura admitted, interrupting her teammate's rant. Sasuke nodded grudging agreement.

"Ideas for tracking them?" Sasuke asked.

Sakura tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Transporting three others over a long distance has to be chakra-intensive," she reasoned. "And they probably expect us to try and find them. Either Haku took them as far away as possible, counting on Temari and Neji to defend if we catch up, or they're relatively close, and Haku can still fight or run them away again." She turned slowly and squinted off into the trees. "I saw a flash of light, there," she said, pointing north, "like sunlight off a mirror. "They might have started travelling by foot from there."

"Let's go," said Sasuke immediately, yanking a kunai out of the tree it had been buried in.

"Hey," interrupted Naruto, ignoring or unaware of the way Sasuke scowled at him. "What about that?"

They all swivelled to look. San's carrying rack, still piled high with furs, lay abandoned at the base of a tree, half buried in disturbed snow. Sakura exchanged a glance with Sasuke.

"Bring it," said Sasuke reluctantly. "It's still part of our mission.

Naruto sputtered. "Me?"

"I'm still recovering," Sakura said primly. "Plus, you're the strongest."

Naruto preened. Sasuke glowered. "If you say so, Sakura-chan!" said Naruto cheerfully, and hefted the rack onto his shoulders. It towered over him comically, nearly twice his height, but he handled the weight easily. "I'm the strongest," he told Sasuke, puffing out his chest.

"Whatever you want to think, loser," Sasuke sneered back, leaping ahead atop the snow to get away from him.

Sakura scrutinized the landscape with narrow eyes as she sprinted. All was still - the snow here blanketed the ground in a smooth sheet, broken only by half-buried twigs or sticks. Sakura caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of her eye, but when she whipped her head around for a better look, she saw only a bird, fluttering away.

"We need a plan," said Sasuke, breath coming out in soft puffs that hung in the air. "That team - " He gritted his teeth, " - is stronger than us. They can beat us in a head on fight, even if Neji isn't using his Byakugan."

"We need to wear out Haku," Sakura said immediately. "As long as he can use his ice mirrors, they have a quick escape."

"Haku could take all of us in a fight," Sasuke muttered under his breath.

"I can take him!" Naruto insisted. "Itachi-sensei showed me this super awesome jutsu last week - "

"No, Haku can use wind-natured jutsu too, and so can Temari," Sakura said absently. "And I'm pretty sure theirs are stronger than yours.

"It's not a fuuton," Naruto corrected, and lowered his voice conspiratorially. "It's a super secret, super strong jutsu! Itachi-sensei said I shouldn't teach it to anyone else because you need a ton of chakra and I have a ton of chakra but no one else has a ton of chakra except maybe Gaara so it could maybe kill you because it'll drain your chakra and then you wouldn't have any chakra - "

"Naruto," Sakura said with remarkable patience, "what is the jutsu?"

"It's called - " Naruto paused for dramatic effect, " - Taijuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"

"A clone," Sasuke deadpanned. Sakura frowned. A shadow clone? One of the Academy sensei had talked about it her first week of class - it was a kinjutsu, forbidden to even some jounin. But if Itachi-sensei had really taught it to him, it had to be okay. Right?

"A strong clone," Naruto insisted. "It can hit people and use chakra and really fight and everything!"

"Itachi-sensei taught it to you?" Sakura clarified.

"Yeah!" said Naruto. "But it's a super secret, super strong jutsu, and Itachi-sensei said - "

Sakura tuned the rest of it out. A clone that could actually fight - like Zabuza-sensei's mizu bunshin. The wheels in Sakura's head began turning as she scraped together the beginnings of a plan.

Sasuke regarded her with narrowed eyes. "What are you thinking?"

"Naruto, can you henge them into whatever?" Sakura asked.

"Huh?" Naruto startled out of his rant. "Uh, yeah, sure."

Sakura smiled slowly.

Sakura's team was not great at tracking. They were not even good at it. They were, in fact, barely passable, which became painfully clear whenever they went up against the stealth-recon team - Hinata's - and the mobile strike team - Temari's. Sakura's team was supposed to be the heavy combat team, but they weren't too good at it yet either.

Temari's team on foot was faster than Sakura's, especially since all three could walk on top of both water and the snow easily while Naruto downright couldn't on the first count and sometimes slipped on the second. However, they would need to deal with San, who was undoubtably attached to her civilian persona, which meant they also had to lug around her dead weight.

That was ultimately the only reason Sasuke spotted them. "There," he hissed, pointing, and Sakura caught a glimpse of San draped cheerfully over Temari's back - physically, the strongest - peeking back as the other team disappeared over a ridge not a hundred meters ahead.

"Operation: Spook Them And Suddenly Whip Out The Super Strong Surprise is a go!" Naruto whispered gleefully.

Sakura resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

"This team is horrible at names," Sasuke muttered, and took off. Naruto charged after him, possibly cackling under his breath, but Sakura wasn't sticking around to listen.

She flitted from tree to tree, cutting around the side of the mountain at a dead sprint. She just had to reach the base of the mountain on the other side before Temari's team. Haku was in the lead, weaving back and forth methodically without straying too far from his teammates - their close-knit formation was primed for a quick escape.

But honestly? Even if Sakura's team was on the offensive now, putting them against Temari's team - when Sakura and Sasuke and Naruto were definitely not expecting it - was more than a little unfair. Neji was a year older, Haku and Temari somewhere around three years older, were physically taller, stronger, and faster, and all three of them had miles more combat experience than any of Sakura's team. Sakura's team had been kept back from any fighting when at all possible, and with Gaara and Sai on Hinata's team, Sakura's team had the least real-world fighting experience: essentially, none.

So Sakura didn't have high hopes about coming out of this victorious. And given that Naruto generally didn't have a stealthy bone in his body, she didn't have high hopes of surprising the other team with an ambush. This was a hail mary, because if they went back empty-handed and without even trying to get San back, Zabuza-sensei would cut their heads off and have them impaled in the base camp as a warning to the rest of the pack. After he made them run laps until they dropped and beat them into the ground, which he would do either way if they didn't succeed.

Sakura had a fantastically healthy fear of her sensei, and she was not afraid to admit it.

She made it around the mountain with time to spare, half-hidden in the hollow of the roots of a tree. She peaked over the roots. If Neji was using his Byakugan, there was no way he wouldn't spot her team surrounding them - they could just rabbit with Haku's ice mirrors again - but the other genin continued their slow lope towards her.

Sakura spared a moment to scowl. This team's biggest - voluntary - handicap was the only reason her team even had a sliver of chance, and that rankled. She tipped her head to the side and just barely made out the sound of breathing. Haku was closing in on her position. "Naruto, you better not miss the signal," she muttered. "Kasumi Juusha no Jutsu."

Haku's breath stuttered as she cast her genjutsu, throwing it out like a net and catching everyone in her vicinity. She blinked, allowing the illusion to superimpose reality, and sidled around the tree, keeping the trunk between them. A burst of chakra on the team's other side - Naruto.

"It's a genjutsu," Temari said sharply. "Kai!"

But the shadowy figures remained, pouring out of the trees in seemingly endless streams, and Temari tensed, tightening her grip on San.

"Ow," said San mildly.

Neji drew his tanto, settling into a ready crouch, and senbon slipped out of Haku's sleeves until he wielded three in each hand, sprouting from between his fingers like claws as he retreated to set his back against his teammates'.

"Attack!" Naruto crowed, because he could never quite master a silent attack, and as one, his kage bunshin dropped their henge of Sakura's mist servants and charged.

Okay, with this technique, Sakura could maybe see their team as the heavy combat squad. The clones dogpiled the other team, flinging themselves kunai-first with wild abandon and one long, continuous war cry. Haku's senbon hissed into the stampede, but with every clone that popped out of existence, two more took its place. At his side, Neji wielded his tanto with deadly precision in one hand and blasted apart bunshin with raw chakra using the other. The two of them, however, would soon be overrun by the swarm - and Haku needed space for his mirror escape jutsu or he'd risk pulling along some unwanted passenger. Or maybe they could pull him back out? Sakura was curious.

"The hell is this?" Temari slid San off her back, reaching into her holster for her kunai.

The teen rapped her admonishingly on the back of the head. "This is not hell," San informed her sternly. "This is my mother's sacred forest, pup."

Client successfully separated from enemy combatant. Sakura henged into one of Naruto's clones and leapt into the fray.

Neji let loose a blast of chakra that vaporized a third of Naruto's clones, and Sakura tumbled out of the way. Haku's eyes zeroed in on her and narrowed. In a blur of movement, he sent his entire handful of senbon zipping at her. One of Naruto's bunshin dove in front of her, taking the brunt of the attack, and she darted forward, snapping out a kunai. Haku caught it on another senbon as the clones surged. "Sakura-chan," he said, voice mild, and she dropped the henge.

She bared her teeth, twisting with her whole body, and he let the senbon fly out of his hand. She slashed with the blade again, backhand, but he grabbed her wrist and forced it away, pushing her back a step. A clone pounced at him from the side, but he skewered it with a senbon without even looking. Sakura smiled.

Behind Haku, a huge fireball hit the ground and exploded, sending snow and droplets of water flying as Sasuke revealed himself among the clones on the other side. Sakura threw herself backwards and away as Haku stumbled, and before he could follow, a pair of clones mobbed him. Sakura turned tail and ran.

"I have her!" Sakura veered towards Sasuke's voice, but had to twist out of the way of a fuuton that hit the tree next to her, leaving a huge, spiderwebbing crack. "Naruto!"

"I'm on it!" Sakura blinked, and their teammate multiplied once again.

How many times could he do that? Sakura was beginning to think it was cheating, a little.

Temari's team was clearing the rest of the clone distraction fast, but that was okay. Sakura's team fled for the lake, San carried between a pair of kage bunshin like some sort of trophy.

Sakura's breath came in harsh pants, but they were almost there. Just a little further. Once they reached the pine, their mission was complete. She chanced a glance over her shoulder and squeaked. Temari glared back at her from a hundred meters, Haku and Neji hard on her heels as she charged down the slope.

"Incoming!" Sasuke shouted, and Sakura whipped around in time to see Sai - aboard a giant ink construct - swoop down like a bird of prey on San and her clone protective custody.

"Oh, come on!" Naruto howled, launching himself bodily at the ink hawk.

Sakura really, truly wished she had the time to stop and wail about the injustice of it all, because why was her team, the least experienced team, the target? Why did everyone else have more information than they did? Why was this a three way drill? Why was Sakura stuck between two stronger teammates, on a team between two vastly stronger teams? Why was Sakura the one who ended up with a stupid concussion? Why was Sakura the stupid civilian? Why was Sakura so weak?

But she didn't have time to complain, not now, so she gritted her teeth and unsheathed another kunai and hurled it at the ink creature as it banked away from San. Hinata deflected it away with her own, leaning down from where she crouched on the bird's back behind Sai. Gaara sent a blast of sand in her direction, and she dove out of the way, back towards the clones guarding San. "Keep running!" she yelled, and they booked it. "Whatever happens," she snapped at Naruto, "get San to that tree. Don't stop!"

"Yeah!" Naruto agreed, pouring on the speed and pulling ahead.

Sasuke scrambled to follow, dodging the kunai that whipped past his shoulder. Sakura looked back to see Temari, just meters away, send a hail of shuriken at her. Panicked, Sakura threw herself into a substitution and hit the ground running.

A shadow swooped down. She ducked, but the bird streaked right over her. "Sasuke!" she shouted.

"Hey!" Sasuke snapped, and twisted away, but it wasn't enough. Sai's creature snagged him by an arm and swept him up, up, up -

When Sakura was a kid, she and all her friends had had a relatively well-developed and rational fear of heights. Or of falling. Sasuke, apparently, lacked this point in his development, because he reached around and hurled a kunai point blank into the bird.

It shattered into thousands of black droplets, sending him and the entire Team Hi-Sa-Gaa free-falling through the air.

"Are you insane, you idiots?" Temari shouted as they plummeted.

Sand poured out of Gaara's oversized knapsack, snagging his teammates by their cloaks and slowing their descent. A second large hawk bloomed from Sai's scroll and swept them all up, but Sasuke evaded Hinata's attempt to grab him and kicked off the creature's wing.

He plunged downwards, twisting midair like a cat, and ended up a meter in the snow.

Sakura hurled her kunai at the bird as it dove and it banked away sharply, but not before Gaara and Hinata dropped neatly off the side. It was abruptly clear to Sakura that Team Hi-Sa-Ga most definitely did not have the same objective that Sakura's team or Temari's team did. "Sasuke, they're after you!" she yelled, just as Temari blew past, ignoring her entirely. Neji and Haku followed suit, and Sakura's head whipped between them - chasing Naruto and his clones - and Team Hi-Sa-Gaa, closing in on Sasuke.

"I'm not the mission!" Sasuke leapt clear as Gaara and Hinata cornered him, leaping halfway up a tree with a kunai in one hand and shuriken in the other. "Go help Naruto!"

Sakura hesitated. Sasuke was her teammate, but he couldn't fight off an entire team by himself. Neither could Naruto, despite his newfound ability to multiply seemingly indefinitely. But Naruto had San and San's things to guard, and he only had to get them to the pine. "Just hang on!" she called, and as she reluctantly turned to sprint after Naruto's trail of clones and pursuers, saw Sasuke bare his teeth and launch himself at Sai's bird out of the corner of her eye. He could take care of himself, for a little bit. Probably.

Unfortunately for Sakura, Naruto could outrun her easily. Temari's team - all of them - could outrun Naruto. This meant that, despite her intention to help Naruto, Sakura couldn't actually do much when Temari's team caught up to him, because she was still several hundred meters away.

"Get off me, you heathens!" Naruto cried as Haku cut off his escape, stepping out of a mirror right in front of him.

"That doesn't mean what you think it does," Temari retorted, "Fuuton: Toppa!" and scattered clones, Naruto, San, and San's things with a blast of wind.

Temari leapt after Naruto. Haku stood his ground against the clones that crowded him. Neji darted for San, who stood passively in the snow despite the demise of her bunshin guards.

Sakura bolted towards Neji, hurling a pair of kunai ahead of her. He slashed them out of the air with his tanto, whirling to face her as she approached. "You cannot defeat me," he said. Statement of fact; certainty, not arrogance.

Maybe not, but for the sake of her head staying attached to her body, she had to try.

Sakura stopped short, yet another kunai in each hand. She crept around him on silent feet, but he followed, turning his head and pivoting slowly to keep himself between her and San. Sakura resisted the urge to grit her teeth. She calmed her breathing, then held it and cautiously slunk the other way.

"Clever, pup," said San fondly, and in front of her, Neji tensed, raising his tanto higher into a guard position.

Sakura took a step forward, then another. She didn't trust herself to be able to get all the way behind him, but if he could just blindside him -

The second she released her kunai, he whirled, impossibly fast. "Genjutsu: Tori no Uta!" she cried, fumbling through the seals as quickly as she could as he pounced at her. She rolled out of the way, and he shook his head like a dog, her birdsong genjutsu giving her the opening she needed to grab San by the wrist and drag her off. "Naruto!" she cried, yanking San out of the way of Neji's lunge.

"Kage bunshin no jutsu!" Naruto yelled, yet again, and another mob of clones swarmed the battlefield, cutting off Neji's charge.

The older boy snarled, "One trick - nnnft!"

Sakura glanced wildly over her shoulder past the seething clones to see Sai's construct carry away Neji much the same way they'd tried to Sasuke. A glint of light reflected off his tanto, falling through the air as it was knocked out of his hand.

"What are you even doing?" Naruto hollered. Sakura agreed, but she had more pressing things to worry about. Like putting some distance between her and the rest of Temari's team.

"Haku!" Temari shouted through the trees, and a trio of senbon hissed after the bird, followed by Haku himself.

Sakura no longer knew who was trying to do what, or if this was just a three-way brawl between all the teams in the pack. All she knew was that San needed to get to the pine tree with her stupid -

Her stupid carrying rack. "Grab her things!" she ordered, whirling towards one of Naruto's clones. "You two, carry her, go!"

"What's happening?" Naruto wailed, as his opponent promptly abandoned the fight to chase after her teammates. "Sakura-chan!"

"I don't know!" And frankly, Sakura no longer cared. Sakura just wanted to get San to her tree so the exercise could end and she could go find Sasuke, or maybe even give up and curl up in a fetal position because given further thought, Zabuza-sensei might murder them if they failed, but he would probably mutilate them for coming back one team member short. At least if he murdered them, their suffering would be over faster.

Their mad dash turned out to be unnecessary, because neither team - or Sasuke - showed up. The route was positively silent, even though Sakura twitched every time the wind blew or branches crackled. The pine, just at the edge of the frozen lake, towered into the sky with snow-laden boughs.

"We're here!" said Naruto.

"Is this the right tree?" asked another Naruto.

"I dunno, I think it looks pretty tall," said yet another.

Sakura rolled her eyes. One Naruto had been bad enough, and now he could multiply at will. "This is the right tree," she said. "Right?" She turned to San.

"It is," said San placidly. "What an interesting trip we had."

Sakura took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Great," she said weakly. "So, uh, we're done? We can just leave you here?"

"You are," San agreed. "You can."

"We gotta get Sasuke!" Naruto said immediately.

Sakura would never admit it out loud, but she was tired, sore, and battered. Her legs were jelly and her finger twitching from gripped her kunai. She really just wanted to wrap herself up in her cloak and curl up in her hammock-bunk and sleep.

It was just a training mission, Sasuke would be fine either way. They should just leave him.

But Zabuza-sensei.

She sighed wistfully. "Okay," she agreed wearily. "Let's go get Sasuke."

None of Sakura's team was very good at tracking, but out of the three, Sasuke was by far the best. Without him, Sakura and Naruto were reduced to backtracking as best they could and squinting at the horizon in hopes of spotting their wayward teammate or one of the other teams.

"Hey," Naruto said. "How come nobody chased us just now?"

Sakura grimaced. "They weren't after San, not anymore," she said. She skidded on a patch of ice, tripped over a branch protruding from the snow, and sent little black flakes flying as she stumbled knee-deep into the stow. She scowled, stepping free and looked a little closer, pivoting in a slow circle.

Naruto, oblivious, kept walking. "But San was the target! Everyone only attacked us when she was with us."

Patches of ice, refrozen after a melt. Branches and twigs, seemingly dark from moisture, actually charred. Sasuke was here, still fighting, but a while ago.

Sakura needed a better view. "Naruto," she called after her teammate absently. She stepped up onto the trunk of the nearest tree, running up its length with sure strides. For kilometers around, the forest - half evergreen, the other half skeletal - was empty aside from her and Naruto, who true to form, was already several hundred meters away and still walking. "Naruto!" she called again, loud enough that her voice carried through the trees.

He was possibly the least observant person she had ever met, and that included herself. At least Sakura wasn't so busy talking to herself that she didn't notice her teammate wasn't next to her anymore.

"Hey!"

Sakura grabbed for the tree frantically as she slipped, clutching desperately to the trunk as she peered down at her sensei.

Zabuza-sensei scowled up at her, arms crossed. "What the hell are you doing up there by yourself, girl?" he demanded. "Get down here, the exercise is done."

Sakura squeezed her eyes shut briefly, took a panicked breath.

"Now," Zabuza-sensei snarled.

Forcing her fingers to let to of their death grip on the bark, Sakura made her way down the tree slowly.

Zabuza-sensei made as if to cuff her on the back of the head, but switched to her shoulder at the last minute, sending her stumbling forward. "What were you thinking, girl? You don't run off by yourself when you're already weak and outnumbered!"

Sakura felt her shoulders hunching inwards involuntarily. "I was - "

"I don't care." Zabuza-sensei glowered at her. "Where's the loud brat?" He whirled even as Sakura pointed wordlessly, and she followed as Zabuza-sensei stalked after Naruto.

Sakura was one hundred percent sure that Sensei was Not Happy.

"You are all absolute morons who are going to get yourselves killed the minute you step out of this forest!"

From her spot between Naruto and Sasuke, Sakura snuck a glance at Zabuza-sensei and clutched her hands together beneath her cloak. Sasuke, scowling, discreetly brushed soot off his pants.

"We finished the mission!" Naruto pointed out, crossing his arms and glaring at their sensei.

Zabuza sneered. "Yeah? Was it worth it, losing your fucking teammate to get a paycheque?"

Naruto dropped into a sullen silence, but Zabuza-sensei steamrolled on. "That genkai kekkei is one of the last of its breed. Take a wild guess - what do you think an enemy would do with that?" he barked, and jabbed a finger at Sasuke "Ask his cousin. One eye gouged out, his body dissected and experimented on. Uchiha Shisui was at the top of his game. How easily do you think you brats will break? How long do you think it'll be before you face those eyes on the opposite side of the battlefield?"

Sasuke was glaring beneath his bangs, but Sakura just felt sick. That hunted cast that haunted Shisui-sensei when he talked about his time as a prisoner - she didn't want to watch her teammates like that.

"I don't have the Sharingan yet," Sasuke muttered spitefully.

Zabuza-sensei sneered. "They'll just breed you like a mule, then," he snapped. "And you!" He turned the full force of his glare at Naruto. "You wander off without your godsdamned concussed teammate when you're already a man down? Great way to make it easier for the other teams to take you out!"

"I didn't - " Naruto defended weakly, darting guilty glances at Sakura.

"That was my mistake," Sakura interjected hurriedly. "I - "

Zabuza-sensei rolled his eyes. "Oh, right, it's both your faults for letting the girl with the brain injury call the shots. If you already know you're weaker than every other team, why the fuck would you split up? You may as well slit your own throats and save everyone the time. You left your strongest member behind without even trying to lose your hunters!"

"We prioritized the mission," Sasuke muttered. "I told them to go."

"San was a spy," said Zabuza-sensei. "The mission for Shisui's team was to make contact and retrieve a report, which was hidden in her belongings."

Oh. Sakura felt her heart drop. That explained a lot.

"What about Gaara's team?" Naruto asked in an uncharacteristically quiet voice.

Zabuza-sensei shrugged. "Capture the two with doujutsu."

"What should we have done?" Sasuke demanded. "We can't fight them off or outrun them. There's no way we could have won this!"

"Abort the mission," Zabuza-sensei barked. "Yeah, you're Hana-ha or whatever, but right now you're also nukenin. You have no backup and no village to support you, and you are worth more than any merchant ever will be."

Sakura exchanged uneasy glances with Naruto and Sasuke. Fail a mission? Give up? That didn't sound right.

Zabuza-sensei fixed them with a narrow-eyed glare. "You don't have the luxury of honor or pride. If this was a war zone and you were protecting something or someone a lot more vital, maybe you make a different call. But this?" he waved a hand derisively. "Pick your battles, brats. And you sure as fuck better come out of them alive."


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9: San Very Briefly Gossips About Kakashi's Love Life (or lack thereof)

This is the one where things change.

* * *

For much of her life, San had lived alone in her mother's forest with her wolf-siblings. Now, her den was overrun by Kakashi's pack - two thirds of them pups.

San did not mind this overmuch, for all that they were loud and clumsy and scared the kodama. They were pups after all, still learning to stalk and prowl, and mortals, so they could not see the kodama.

They were just learning to hunt for themselves, but far too soon, they would leave to hunt other ningen. This, San did not understand so much, just as she did not understand so much why her ningen parents had each followed their own orders and killed the other. A territory dispute she understood, but why involve pups? They tripped over themselves and slept like branches and were always hungry. Surely there were battles to be fought when they had grown.

But San was not their pack leader; Kakashi was. Kakashi had asked them to fight, and fight they would. San would not sway them.

Instead, San would do her best to ensure the pups survived.

Carefully, San brushed the shavings off the piece of bone she had carved from a bull moose's rack two days prior and molded to her will. Beneath her hands and her blade, the muzzle of a wolf took shape. She folded in her chakra, smoothing it into the mask's smooth surface and letting it sink in as she ran her fingers along the pointed ears, raised muzzle, the cutout eyeholes. With the blessing of her mother, this mask would not fail its bearer.

She set it aside with a sigh, arranging it carefully in a row next to the others.

Yuuki wound his way into the den behind her, settling down as she leaned back against his bulk. She felt rather than heard the rumbling in his chest as he rested his head on his front paws. "Little wolves, you make them," he noted. "Six now, one face, this is."

"Three to come," San agreed. "Same face."

"Hide the face this can, but hide the scent you cannot. Fool a hunter once only," he pointed out.

"We hide who they were, not the one that they are," said San. "No need to disguise scent when none will recognize." She lolled her head around to meet Yuuki's eye. "And ningen scent-nose is not so strong. Fool a ningen hunter many times by hiding that which is sensed by the eye."

"Kakashi-ningen has a keen nose," Yuuki mused. "But agree. Pups seem not to smell-track, nor rest of the pack."

"Kakashi is Hatake," reminded San. "He is wolf too, like you and I." She felt it in her bones as he hummed agreement.

"Much strength you use for pups not yours." His ear flicked backwards briefly towards a distant yell before angling forwards again. "Kakashi-ningen's pack, not yours. Soon, they leave. They will not return. This, you know."

"Yes," said San tiredly. "When the new leaves bud full growth, they go."

Yuuki swung his muzzle around to nudge at her. "Not mourn. Some, fleeting as the spring blossoms; others constant as the seasons. Nothing to do but watch, sometimes."

"True," San agreed pensively. "But the pups are too young for war."

A snort. "Never old enough for war."

This was also true. San lay back against her brother, letting herself relax against his warmth.

"Will you follow?"

"No," she said. "My home is here."

"San! Small sister!" Chie leaned her head into the den. "Grow roots, do you, imouto?"

"Your imouto who is pack leader," San corrected with a sniff, turning her head into Yuuki's side to hide her smile.

Chie chirruped, eyes dancing. "My strong, fierce, small imouto who is pack leader," she agreed. "Want you not to go to the ningen town today? Sundown come, they fear you more."

"You, they fear more," San retorted, but slithered to her feet. " Ningen fear what they do not see, and lurk you in the forest outside the town like an onryou ."

Chie preened. "That is so. Quite fearsome, I. Come you, brother mine?"

"Sleep, I." Yuuki yawned, baring sharp teeth. "Night patrol, I did, with the small Uhei. Fast, he is."

"No fun if haunt Mother's forest all the time," Chie complained. "Wander, some."

"With pups here?" Yuuki snorted. "Venture not far, or danger finds them. Chakra-scent if we are gone and seals fail may reach the samurai-ningen. "

"Yuuki is right," said San. "Reactivate the seals he can. Kakashi's pack cannot."

"Very well," Chie said. "Leave you then, brother mine."

"You leave, sisters mine," Yuuki agreed sleepily, and rested his head on his paws once again.

San padded across the den, picking up her pack from the floor and stepping carefully over her brother's sprawled legs.

"Bring you things to trade?" asked Chie, swishing her tail back and forth.

San hesitated, glancing back around the cave. "Three elkskins," she answered. "Left where?"

"Hollow," said Chie. "Left, after treat to leather."

"Ah," said San, taking quick steps to her sister. "I remember." She took a handful of Chie's ruff and swung herself up as the wolf crouched down obligingly.

The clearing was empty, Kakashi's packmates and their trios of pups having ventured into different parts of San's territory, but San could hear Itachi's calm voice and the clack of metal on metal coming from the hollow.

"Silence-black-scorch is teaching his pups long today," Chie noted. "Before sunrise, he started, and still here."

"Teach longer, as time passes," San agreed.

"San," Kakashi's packmate greeted, turning to greet her. "Chie."

Behind him, Hinata clashed with Sai, a brace of kunai in the girl's hand and a tanto in the boy's. Gaara sat crosslegged, watching intently with unblinking eyes. Though San knew each of the ningen names for the pups, her wolf-brother and wolf-sister used only sense-names because they cared not for other ningen names - too hard to remember, when Kakashi's wolf-pack numbered eight themselves. Sense-names were much easier.

San tilted her head in greeting, and her sister mirrored her. "We are going to town," said San. "Have you anything you wish us to find for you?"

Itachi frowned thoughtfully. "Vegetables, if there are any to be found. We are depleting your store of onions and potatoes quite rapidly," he said apologetically.

"Food is meant to be eaten," San said dismissively. "We will find you vegetations. Vegetables."

"Thank you," said Itachi, and if he'd noticed her fumble he made no notice.

Chie skirted the play-battle to the corner where the meat was buried in snow and the hides hung to cure. San slid off her back, padding to the racks of hides. "River-petal-turtle," she said aloud to her sister, as the wolf tugged an elkskin off the rack. "She fights like metal claws are almost right, yes?"

"Not claws, she needs," said Chie contemplatively. "Used to her paws, but no chakra in claws. Hides, as turtle named her. Too cautious to be close, but distance helps her not."

"Claws but not claws," San surmised, rolling the hide into a bundle, "with her fire-chakra within."

Chie hummed agreement, nosing the second hide off the rack. "Not meant for the hunt, she," her sister noted. "Finds no joy in battle."

"She carries the fire still," San disagreed. "Enjoy not, maybe, but born for the hunt."

"Wings, she needs, for her paws," Chie suggested, "to raise the flames. Ningen have them, named what I know not."

San bundled the second hide with a length of twine. "Wings? A fan, the name you seek."

"A fan," agreed Chie. "Maybe sharp, but no claws, and chakra within."

"Would work well enough," said San thoughtfully, as the two of them rolled the last hide. "A project, for later. Easy enough to mold, I think."

"Clever imouto mine," said Chie affectionately. "Come now; the sun waits for no wolf."

San hefted the pelts onto Chie's shoulders, then leapt up lightly behind them. "Run you fast, then," she said.

Chie rumbled agreement, whirling on nimble paws and streaking into the caves with her tail streaming out behind her. They burst back out into the snow with a flying leap, and Chie's paws skimmed the top lightly as she wove surefootedly through the trees.

One hand buried in Chie's fur, the other clamped firmly on the leathers, San smiled. The icy wind whipped against her bare face, sending her hair flapping out behind her along with her cloak. She moved with her wolf-sister's strides as Chie crested a ridge and plunged back downwards, sending sprays of snow in their wake.

In the distance, beneath the cover of a patch of pine trees, one of Kakashi's hounds bolted in the opposite direction, back towards the camp, with a package clamped firmly in his jaws - sharp Akino of the ice-blue eyes. San had scarce seen Kakashi's entire wolf-pack in the same place; the hounds were ever in and out of her mother's forest bearing messages and packages.

A sharp yip of greeting - a small figure capered at the top of the next ridge before disappearing down the far side. Chie rumbled her amusement. "Still a pup, that one," she chuckled.

"Always a pup, now," murmured San. "Cut far too short, Shiba's first life."

"In body, perhaps," retorted Chie. "In mind, only a few more years to still be a pup. Another pup, Kakashi-wolf will pick up soon."

"Kakashi has eight in his pack already," San pointed out, the words nearly carried away by the wind.

"No more Hatake," Chie said gravely. "No others to bring back half-spirit-wolves. He does not, no more wolf-spirited live second lives."

"He could find a mate," said San. "He is young enough still, to continue his bloodline."

Her sister snorted. "A mate, Kakashi-wolf? Too focused on battle, Kakashi-wolf."

"Far away from his territory, Kakashi," San reminded.

"Hatake, Kakashi-wolf. Mother's blessing, in Mother's forest - his territory too, should he wish." Chie skidded down the slope, sliding nimbly around a large bush and coming to a halt next to the road. "But his heart does not allow this wish, mm?"

"No," San agreed, hopping neatly off her sister's back. She reached back up to tug the hides down with her. "Lurk you in the forest?" she asked, slinging them on top of her pack.

"Lurk in the forest, I." Her eyes glinted playfully.

San huffed, amused. "Scare not too much," she said, and turned towards the town. The ningen startled easily these days, and with her shinobi clan kiba on her forehead and cheeks, the townspeople found her twice-fearsome. They did not like shinobi in this country, nor wolves like Yuuki or Chie. She flipped back her hood belatedly, knocking the half-mask off the top of her head. That, too, the ningen were wary of.

Nearly half an hour of walking took her to the border of the town. A wagon approached her, and the man driving took one look at her, walking down the center of the road, and jerked his horse to the side to give her a wide berth. San narrowed her eyes at the horse's mouth, then him. To his credit, the man did look slightly guilty and quite panicked, and the horse did not smell fearful nor was there a tang of blood in the air. The horse rolled its eye to the side and sent her a long-suffering look.

She turned her head deliberately and stepped into the town. The sun had tipped towards setting, and the the houses reverberated with the clanging and banging of the occupants bustling around inside. San followed her nose down the familiar path to the leatherworker. His den was large and made of hewn stone, with a heavy wooden door. San pushed it open. "Toshiki."

A large man, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, dropped his metal scraper and clutched at his heart. "San!" he said weakly. "I didn't hear you come in."

San blinked, nonplussed. She'd made noise and everything when she was walking. Ningen could be so insensitive to the world around them sometimes. "I have elkskins," she announced, swinging her pack onto the nearest clear surface with a thump.

Toshiki may be easily startled, but he was deeply passionate about leatherworking. He abandoned the pelt - goat, it smelled like, but it was hard to tell from all the scents clogging up the air - hanging from its rack, wiping his hands on his apron and stumping over to San's counter. He slit the twine on one, throwing it out to its full size on the counter, over the various tools scattered on its surface. "This is nice," he said appreciatively, running his hands over its surface. "As always."

"Yes," San agreed. "I have three."

"Three!" The man's eyes lit up - excitement, not greed. San rather liked Toshiki leatherworker. "The usual rate all right?"

"Yes," San confirmed. The man had never tried to trick her the way some of the other townspeople had, when she had come into town for the first time with very little knowledge of ningen trading and money, or try to drive her away like a mindless beast. Her wolf-mother's knowledge had been decades out of date, and she had not so much practice being a ningen yet. Now, though, she let Toshiki slide a stack of ryou to her and heave the skins further into his den.

"A pleasure, as always," he beamed, shoving his hands in his apron pockets. "Planning on sticking around today?"

"No," said San, tucking away the money. "I will be gone before nightfall. A little shopping - food, cloth - first, then I leave."

"Still no merchants coming through with the snow," Toshiki noted. "But if you're fine with the older stuff, Okoro's place is still open. She's got cloth."

"Thank you," said San, dipping her head. She swung her pack back onto her back. "Sightings of shinobi, late?"

Toshiki frowned absently. "Not here, but some of the border towns think they have. The samurai are stepping up patrols." He reached for a pair of gloves absently. "Why, little thing like you expecting trouble?"

San flashed a sly smile. "Always," she said, turning towards the door.

Toshiki laughed. "Come back any time!" the leatherworker called as she pushed her way back out.

The pickings at Okoro's were slim, as warned, but she picked out a bolt of grey-black cloth and tied it to the top of her pack for a handful of ryou. The sun was setting in earnest now, blue skies turned golden-yellow-red. San wove her way through the dinnertime crowds to the open-air markets, where the shopkeepers were beginning to pack their products in large boxes for the night.

At her usual market, she browsed what remained and collected a bag of carrots, onions, and a large jar of pickled vegetables.

"Dude, look at her fang tattoos." A small cluster of pups huddled behind her, tailing her as she moved from aisle to aisle with quick glances and whispers too loud to go unheard. San did what one did when faced with curious pups: she ignored them, and instead contemplated a jar of miso.

"Isn't she a shinobi? Shinobi have tattoos like that."

One of the male pups scoffed. "Shinobi aren't allowed in Tetsu. The samurai don't like 'em."

"So what?" said a third. "She just has tattoos for fun?"

"Some individuals possess clan markings, as those appear to be," said the oldest. "It is not unheard of for them to leave their clan or village."

"Oh great, is she a rogue shinobi or something? That's pretty dangerous," one said warily. "My ma'll kill me if she goes nuts and maims us or whatever."

Flesh on flesh; an indignant yelp. "Live a little, Kokkaku."

"No. I believe she lives nearby. She has come to this town every month or so since I myself arrived and never seems to have caused trouble of any sort." The oldest, again, ignoring the antics of the younger pups in much the way Zabuza did.

"Really? I've never seen her before."

"Her cloak is totally wild. It's like, entirely fur."

San resisted the urge to preen a little. It was indeed wild: she'd made it herself, from the first bear she killed, scarce thirteen years, and it had taken nearly a full month to finish.

She selected a jar of dark miso and swept to the front counter with her chosen items, scattering the pack of pups. Carefully, she counted out the bills for the shopkeeper.

A long howl drifted over the clank and bustle of the marketplace, leaving a brief lull in the noise. Sam's head jerked towards the source of the sound. Chie. Urgent. Danger? The pups hushed abruptly.

"What the hell?" one murmured.

"I need to leave," San snapped curtly, shoveling her food into her pack. "Keep the remainder."

"What - ?" the woman began, but San wasn't listening.

She had the pack on her back and was out the door in a flash, sprinting as fast as she dared in a civilian ningen town. She dodged clumps of people in the main streets who peppered her with confused or indignant shouts, then veered down an alley to the nearest edge of the town. She ducked a clothesline, vaulted over two different fences, and in one smooth movement, hurtled the boundary wall and hit the ground running on the far side.

Once on open land, she let herself dip into her chakra, fueling her limbs as she streaked across the road and into the welcoming shadows of the forest. "Chie!" she barked.

"Here!" her sister called, and skidded in next to her from the undergrowth.

San leapt up to her back easily, and Chie reared around, lunging back in the direction of the camp. "What happened?" she demanded. "Not hurt nor hunted, you?"

"Not I," Chie panted. "Brother howled from camp, Sea-fang-blood returned bloody. Kakashi-wolf still gone, Yuuki with Silence-black-scorch and Guruko gone to track his hunters."

"Hurry," San urged, fingers tightening in her fur, and Chie obliged.

Zabuza's blood-scent drifted on the wind long before Chie and San reached the caves, hanging heavily among the trees though she could see no spots of crimson scattered in the snow.

"It's fine!" San could hear Zabuza's growl from across the hollow.

Chie leapt across the clearing in three great bounds, flying past the pups huddled near the fire, and skidded to a stop in their sleeping den. The den San shared with Yuuki and Chie was a true cave, with a larger mouth than the pups' half-underground den, and fur nests on stone floor instead of the stacks of hammock-racks the shinobi used. It had become the den borrowed when one of the others sickened or was injured. San did not mind this, though Yuuki liked to grumble.

"You're not okay. Hold the fuck still," Shisui spat back. Blood stained his arms to the elbows, and he had one knee braced on Zabuza's shoulder and the other pinning the other man's arm to the ground as he held a green-glowing hand to the wound ripping through the other's side. Crimson dripped from Zabuza's abdomen to the stone in little pools, and a pile of bloody cloth lay discarded just beyond the pair.

"I could smell your blood kilometers away," San added, leaving Yuuki behind and padding closer. "Shisui. What do you need?"

"To relax," Zabuza snarled around the strip of leather clenched between his teeth. His face, though unnaturally pale, flushed at the edges. He jerked suddenly, eyes rolling up as a convulsion wracked his body. San lunged, grabbing him at the shoulder and hip and holding him down as the chakra in Shisui's hand sputtered. "Shit," he panted as the shaking subsided.

"Boiling water," Shisui snapped. "There's something in there I can't get out. It's ripping up his intestines." His eyes blazed with the fire-shadow-wheel of his clan birthright, narrowed in concentration as he concentrated. "Clean cloth, if you have it."

"Hai," San agreed. "Chie, water!" she called out to her sister, and dug through her pack for the cloth. A shame, perhaps, to use her new cloth for what Shisui intended, but necessary. The blood-scent smothered the air in the cave - and something else. She tilted her head up and inhaled deliberately, much more deeply than the shallow breaths she'd taken since entering the den. "Poison," she said aloud, slashing out strips of cloth.

"I feel it," Shisui answered calmly. His hands continued their work steadily despite the veins and corded muscle that stood out harshly on his arms. "I'm not good enough to extract it."

"Probably water hemlock. I'm immune," Zabuza grunted. "Mostly."

"Not with your intestines shredded and more blood outside than inside your body, you're not," Shisui shot back. "Stop talking, you're distracting me."

Chie ducked back into the cave, a steaming pot swinging gently between her jaws. Shisui glanced up. "Thank you, Chie. San, could you come put pressure on this? He's losing too much blood."

Chie set the water down and retreated to the edge of the cave. San traded spots with Shisui, pressing down firmly on the wound despite Zabuza's pained wheeze. "You are supposed to be the hunter," she informed him reprovingly, "not the prey."

He glared at her balefully. "I wasn't the prey," he snarled.

Shisui spat a ball of fire at the ground under pot of water until it glowed faintly. "Shut up!" he snapped, dropping a strip of cloth into the pot. "Or so help me gods I'll knock you out and let the kids practice iryo ninjutsu on you."

Zabuza's glower promised death. San thought perhaps it was okay to let him talk if it distracted him from the pain. His bite was far worse than his bark, after all, and as long as he barked she did not need to worry about his bite.

Shisui approached, a pair of senbon in hand. "Hold him down, San," he directed. "Z - don't move."

San obligingly shifted over to lean across Zabuza's shoulders as Shisui took her position at his side. Curiously, she watched as he peeled back the cloth, setting it absently further up on his chest, and angled the senbon down.

"Ah, fuck!" Zabuza yelped as Shisui jabbed the needle in, and San pressed down harder as his shoulder muscles tensed with the effort to hold still. "Kami, Konoha, you learn that at the butcher's?"

"From Tsunade-sama, so yeah," Shisui said dryly, doing something complicated and wiggly in Zabuza's abdomen that made the man's face turn white. "Ah, shit."

"What do you mean, 'shit?'" Zabuza demanded.

"It's fine - " Shisui began.

"Don't say shit like 'ah, shit' when you're fucking around in my organs!"

"This wouldn't be a problem if you hadn't gotten yourself half-killed in the first place," Shisui groused. "Didn't I tell you to shut up?"

San watched with interest as Shisui pried something dark and bloody out of Zabuza's innards, prompting a new gush of blood, and dropped it on the cloth. "Blade?" she asked curiously.

"Looks like a piece of shuriken," answered Shisui absently. "It broke, and now there's a bunch of shrapnel in this idiot's intestines."

"Fuck you," Zabuza snarled.

"This is going to take longer than I thought," Shisui muttered, ignoring the other man. "I'm going to heal this a bit so you don't bleed out before I take out the rest."

San leaned forward a little as Shisui called up the green chakra again. Slowly but surely, he stemmed the flow of blood to a trickle.

"Shit," Zabuza gasped. "I - "

"Hold him!" Shisui barked as another seizure stole the rest of the words from his mouth and Zabuza's body bucked violently.

San lost her grip on his wrist and the back of his hand hit her square in the eye. She reeled back before pouncing back on him, shaking her head from side to side to chase away the pain.

"My bad," Zabuza grunted, as the shaking subsided.

"It is the poison," San replied, blinking rapidly.

"Activated charcoal," Shisui muttered. "He needs it. Now. Chie!" His hands had a fine tremble.

Chie shoved her head back into the den, eyeing Zabuza interestedly. "Not look well, Sea-fang-blood," she noted.

"Chie, could you grab the med pack from behind my rack?" said Shisui distractedly. "It's kind of small, squarish, I keep it in the back so it doesn't get stepped on."

"Look the same, all ningen things," muttered Chie. "What smell it?"

"What does it smell of?" San translated.

The chakra flickered out of Shisui's hand. "Uh…" he squeezed his eye shut. When he opened it, his eye was grey-brown-black instead of red. "Alcohol, ginger, willow, yarrow, cloth, coal…?"

"Burn-drink, yellow-bite-root, waterfall-leaf-tree bark, fire-wood-burn-black," she told her sister, because she did not know what 'yarrow' was and all cloth smelled different.

Chie whirled in a flash of fur and vanished. San eyed Shisui, whose already fair complexion seemed much paler than it had when she first entered the cave. "Shisui. Take care," she said. "None to help if you collapse."

"Yeah, cool it, Konoha," Zabuza growled. "It's not gonna fucking kill me."

"You know," Shisui snapped, "Orochimaru was at least trying to keep you alive. He put in more effort than you ever did!"

"Will you fucking quit it with your fucking lectures?"

" You do not look well," San told Shisui pointedly. "You look chakra-tired."

"My control isn't great," Shisui admitted. "I'm burning twenty times the chakra I'm using."

Chie slipped back in. "Many smell like burn-drink and burn-black," she commented, dropping the pack at San's feet, "but only one like yellow-bite-root."

Shisui lunged for the bag. "Open your mouth," he ordered Zabuza over his shoulder as he dumped the contents across the floor.

Zabuza turned his head to spit out the leather strip. "That's fucking charcoal!" he objected as Shisui advanced on him.

"What did you think 'activated charcoal' was?" Shisui shot back.

"Some Fire country hick name for a plant?" Zabuza sputtered.

"Your immune system is shot and this will absorb whatever poison was on that shuriken," the teen said grimly. "Open your damn mouth."

Zabuza did, probably to complain, and Shisui dumped the entirety of the bag of charcoal in his mouth and slapped a hand over his mouth and nose as the other man choked. "Swallow!" he ordered.

"This will help?" San asked dubiously.

"Yes," Shisui said firmly, letting go of Zabuza, who gagged and coughed up a cloud of fine black powder.

San leaned away delicately. "I will get him some water," she said. She did not want to breathe that in.

"Holy - fucking - shit!" Zabuza spat between coughs. San brought a bottle of water to his mouth and he drank greedily.

Shisui shuffled back to the wound in Zabuza's side and picked up the senbon again.

"Care," said San, as his hand wavered.

"I just need to get one more piece out," he insisted, and slowly, laboriously, his eye swirled red once again. "It's right up against his kidney. He moves the wrong way and he loses the whole thing. Again. "

"He fought and ran and now he shakes," San pointed out. "Would it not keep?"

"That's probably what's pushed it in so deep," Shisui muttered, narrowing his eye in concentration. "It'd be nice if the seizures would stop," he added pointedly.

"The fuck you want me to do, Konoha, die?"

San squinted, but her night-vision was not so good and she could barely make out what Shisui was doing. "Can you see?" she asked dubiously. Orange rays filtered in weakly from the outside, just enough to give the cave a dim glow.

"These - this eye lets me see extreme detail and chakra," Shisui explained, working the senbon carefully. "I can see the chakra of his cells - and where they aren't is where the shrapnel is."

"Kakashi-wolf," Chie rumbled from the entrance. San lifted her nose to scent the air but couldn't smell anything besides Zabuza's blood-scent.

The familiar chakra pulsed once, briefly, and Kakashi himself appeared not ten seconds later, silhouetted against the light for a brief moment before ducking into San's den with them. "Sitrep," he said, without preamble.

"I - " Zabuza began.

"Not you," Kakashi cut him off. "You bled all over San's forest. How the hell you have any left I have no idea. Shisui, report."

"Multiple lacerations, upper torso. Punctured intestine due to penetrating trauma. Multiple foreign objects lodged in stomach wall and intestines, likely shrapnel from a shattered shuriken," Shisui rattled off without taking his focus away from what his hands were doing. "Seizures, tachycardia, pallor, and cramping due to acute poisoning, poison unknown. Severe blood loss. I've removed a piece of shrapnel near the liver, temporarily clotted the largest laceration, and am now working to extract another piece near the left kidney."

"And he shoved burnt shit down my throat!" Zabuza interjected.

"And I applied activated charcoal to combat the poisoning," Shisui added.

Kakashi nodded once, sharply. "What do you need me to do?"

"Extract as much shrapnel as possible," said Shisui, drawing back the senbon carefully. A small, dark chip clung to the tip delicately. His chakra failed halfway, and it dropped onto Zabuza's bare stomach. Shisui closed his eye, exhaling shakily, and when it opened again it was dark. "This is my limit," he said, brushing the metal onto the cloth with the other piece of shrapnel. "Taichou, he's not bleeding badly anymore, but if you could close up the cuts in his intestine I think that's best."

"How many pieces? Point out the shrapnel to me," said Kakashi, peeling off his half-gloves and reaching for the burn-drink-cleaner. "This Sharingan saps too much chakra; it'll take too long for me to find them all myself." He shoved his headband up and opened his eye, leaning over next to Shisui.

"Seven," Shisui replied, and painstakingly, his eye swirled fire-shadow-wheel red once again. "One more in the intestinal tract - " he pointed with the senbon, " - and six in the abdominal wall." He used the needle to shift what San presumed were the Zabuza's intestines out of the way. "Here, here, two here, here, and here."

"Acknowledged. Take a break," Kakashi said crisply, accepting the senbon.

Shisui's eye blinked black almost immediately, and he leaned back wearily.

"I stay?" San inquired.

Kakashi spared her a flicker of a glance. "Yes. I may need you still. Shisui," he said, when the other hovered uncertainly behind him. "Get out of here, get cleaned up. I'll call you if you're needed."

"Hai," Shisui agreed reluctantly, and half-walked, half-staggered his way out of San's den.

"No anesthetic?" Kakashi muttered. The green glow of healing chakra gathered at his free hand as he prodded at the gash in the intestine. Slowly, it sealed from the outer edges until all that was left was a pale line.

"The fucking hell do you think I am," Zabuza snarked, "a civilian? Save it for when the brats brain themselves."

"It's not about your pain tolerance," Kakashi said dryly. "It's so you don't flinch and stab your own guts again." His hands worked quickly and efficiently with the senbon as his eye narrowed in concentration. A third piece of shrapnel joined the first two.

"Shisui wished for speed," San offered. "Zabuza has moved much already."

"Hm," said Kakashi. "Do you have anything to soak up the blood with?"

The moon was high by the time Kakashi sat back. He had long since reverted to his natural eye, covering the glow of the fire-shadow-wheel, and Shisui had tagged in and back out twice to give him a break.

Zabuza's side bore a line of San's somewhat crooked stitches, since she was otherwise rested and able to do the sutures while the others were fatigued from the iryo ninjutsu, but he was otherwise intact. (It is not so different, sewing a person and sewing a cloth, she had said, and Kakashi looked at her gravely and told her that it was a slippery slope, which San did not understand so much.) San believed Zabuza had passed out somewhere near the removal of the fourth-from-last piece of shrapnel.

"San - is it all right if we leave him here?" Kakashi asked.

San eyed him keenly, noting the stiffness in his posture and bloodlessness of his face. "Yes," she answered. "Only, I clean up blood first. Hard to breathe with it in the air. It will take longer to recover. Not you!" she added sharply when he reached for the pile of bloodied cloth. "Chakra-tired, you two. Sleep now, or none with chakra-healing to help if he worsens."

"Thanks, San," said Shisui with an attempt at a smile that looked more like a grimace. Kakashi merely nodded before leading the way out of the den.

Chie slipped back in as they filed out, snuffling curiously at Zabuza's side as San mopped up the rest of the blood with the old cloth. "Smells better, he," she noted. "Fire-wood-burn-black fix him?"

"Eats the poison," San explained. "Watch him, you? Wash these, I."

"Watch him, I," Chie agreed, sprawling comfortably on her flank next to him. She rested her nose delicately on her paws. "Much quieter asleep now, this one."

"True for all, that," retorted San, and carried the cloth out of the den.

The pups had learned not to make tracks in the snow, but tonight they had nonetheless, a deep-packed trail from the cooking fire to their den. All save one slept now - the eldest, with the yellow-sand hair who watched over the rest keen-eyed as though she were a mother wolf herself instead of a scant few years older. Wind-blade-wing, San's brother and sister named her, for her grace and ferocity and fierce love of her wind in even mock-battle. She descended now from her watch-perch, and San stopped to let her come.

"How is Zabuza-sensei?" she asked quietly, tucking her hands beneath her cloak. "Shisui-sensei and the captain seemed exhausted. I didn't want to bother them."

"Sleeping, are they?" San inquired, and the girl nodded. "Zabuza as well. Not much use tomorrow, but sewed him tonight."

Temari hesitated, the shadow of a frown furrowing her forehead. "He's okay? It looked serious."

"Serious," San agreed. "Shisui and Kakashi drained their chakra to fix him. Not much use any of them, tomorrow."

"Oh," said Temari, relaxing. "Okay. Thank you."

San inclined her head and watched her curiously, but she seemed to not want anything more. "I will go now," she said, and lifted her bundle to show her the cloth.

"Oh! Do you - " she hesitated.

"No," said San firmly. "I do not require help. Return to your watch."

Temari nodded, and San watched her go, amused. A strong sense of duty, that one. A guardian's spirit.

She shook the thoughts out of her head; she had much to do. She moved onwards.

San was roused from a light doze by the scent of fresh snow and the shuffle of her brother's paws. "Yuuki?" she greeted sleepily, and a cold nose shoved affectionately into her face. "How go it?" she murmured, reaching up to tug her fingers through his fur. It was cold and touched with damp, remnants of a long run through the snow.

"No hunters," Yuuki rumbled. "Traced back to the battle site, Silence-black-scorch and I. Hid the trail, but no interest, of yet." He lowered his body carefully into the furs of their nest until he and Chie bracketed San on either side. "Sea-fang-blood smells better."

San lifted her head, leaning over Yuuki's shoulders to examine the shinobi in the light of dawn filtering into the den. "Looks better too," she noted. "More blood, when little he had before."

"Gone, poison-smell," her brother agreed. "Live another day, this ningen ."

San swatted at him half-heartedly. "Sound not disappointed, you," she scolded.

"Not!" he retorted, rearing his head back in affront. "Though, fill this den with his blood-scent, he did."

"True," Chie yawned from behind her. "Will take a moon to fade."

San sniffed. They did have a point. "On guard, any?"

"A pup," Yuuki answered, pillowing his head on his forepaws and letting his eyes drift closed. "What name she - River-petal-turtle."

Amused, San huffed. "Name she Hinata," she corrected, "but name you her River-petal-turtle."

"Flows like river, delicate like petal, cautious like turtle," he retorted. "I know not a name more fitting for one like she."

"Much noise you make for one who sleeps," Chie complained. "Done sleeping, I! Visit River-petal-turtle now. Come you, small sister?"

"Aa," agreed San, throwing herself childishly at her sister instead.

"Sleep, I," Yuuki grumbled.

"Always sleep you when awake we are," Chie complained.

"Sleep a little, only," Yuuki huffed. "Wake at midday, today. Ran all night." He growled, baring his fangs as Chie nipped at his tail before dancing away.

"Leave him be," San chided as Chie whirled towards the entrance of the den. "Ran much, he did. Slept much, you did. Yuuki - if he wakes, howl us."

Her brother huffed in response, tucking into a tighter curl. "If he wakes, if I wake, I howl."

San rather liked the golden time when the sun was just peeking over the trees, sending brightness sparkling off the white snow until the light ricocheted everywhere and set the world afire. The pups, however, quite liked to sleep past this time. Hinata normally would be no different, but this morning she perched at the favored watch-perch of Kakashi's pack, high up on the cliff wall.

Chie leapt up the cliff wall in a couple graceful bounds and perched just on the edge of the girl's ledge. Hinata smiled hesitantly, looking as if she wanted nothing more than to back away from them.

"Hello, small pup," Chie wuffed cheerfully, flicking her ears.

"G-good m-morning," greeted Hinata, forehead crinkling as she regarded them bemusedly.

"It is morning," San agreed. "Long watch."

"A-ah, not t-too l-long," she replied politely. "N-Naruto-kun w-was on g-guard b-before me."

"Na-ru-to?" Chie parroted, the syllables awkward in her mouth.

"Loud-sun-fox," San explained. Hinata watched their exchange curiously. "You saw Itachi and Yuuki return, no?" San asked her. "And Guruko," she added.

"H-hai," Hinata replied, shoulders hunching a little. "T-they travelled through t-the forest n-near the t-trade t-town and e-entered the t-territory at the n-northeastern b-border."

"Very far, to see," commented San, impressed.

For some reason, she ducked her head even further, in mimicry of Yuuki's turtle name for her. "T-thank y-you," she stuttered.

San frowned at her, concerned. "This only becomes harder," she warned. "Not all as fortunate as your Zabuza-sensei, to be able to run so far to a safe place after such an injury. Your sensei will expect you to fight longer, harder. You will see more terrible wounds, maybe receive."

Impossibly, it was this that prompted the girl to raise her head. "I-I am p-prepared," she said, earnestly meeting San's eyes for the first time. San tilted her head, considering. Young, maybe, but these eyes had seen the darkness in the world. "I-I only w-wish I were s-stronger. L-like T-Temari-san. "

"You will need strength in the time to come," San agreed. "But your strength need not be - " she hesitated, fishing for the words. " - strength ," she finished awkwardly, grimacing.

Hinata frowned. "I-I do n-not u-understand," she admitted, voice small.

San paused, gathering her thoughts. "Neji sees for Temari and Haku," she said. "Haku moves for Neji and Temari. Temari pushes back the target for Haku and Neji. But if all can push and none can see or move, what use is it? You do not need Temari's wind to be strong. You need not crush. Gaara does that. You need not carry; Sai does that. You need only find, because Gaara and Sai could not do this as quick or as well as you."

Hinata bit her lip. "I-I know."

"You are strong already," San told her. "And perhaps later you will find something at which you are even stronger. You need only a will and a reason to learn."

"I-I h-have a r-reason," said Hinata, face set resolutely. "I w-will protect m-my friends."

"Good," San said, pleased. "Go you on, then. Chie and I should like this watch."

"Good with pups, you," Chie noted, shifting more fully onto the ledge as the girl hurried her way down to join the pack of pups gradually spilling from their den.

"I like pups. Just like you and Yuuki," San hummed, amused, "only need a little extra attention."

Chie growled playfully and shook her pelt out, and San had to grab handfuls of her ruff or be thrown off the side of the cliff. "Not so, I," she sniffed. "No attention at all, you watch."

"Joke," San insisted, reaching up to flick her sister's ears. "Much more attention than the pups."

Chie rolled on her side, and San leapt up the cliff wall before she was squashed under the big wolf's bulk. "You will stop your lies," Chie demanded, baring her teeth playfully.

"No lie," San purred. "Need not cuddle, pups."

Chie sniffed haughtily, sprawling back on her ledge. "Important for pack bonding, that," she said prissily.

"Close enough as pack, pups," said San, dropping back down on her sister's back. "Been through much."

"Not enough," Chie said grimly. "Not for war."

In the end, they did not need Yuuki's howl because Zabuza's was loud enough.

"Fuck!"

The pack of pups scattered like startled starlings. Shisui stumbled out of his pack's sleeping den, Kakashi on his heels. Yuuki emerged from theirs, ears flat against his head and eyes slit in annoyance.

"Not enough sleep, he," Chie noted, amused, and slithered languidly down the rock face. "Up to the watch-ledge, you," she called to their brother. "Sleep more there, in the sun."

Yuuki grumbled an agreement, and eyes half-closed, pounced his way up. San slid down from Chie's back and followed Shisui and Kakashi into her den. "You are chakra-tired, still," she told the two pointedly.

"Just checking on him," assured Shisui. "I'mma sleep again. Right after this." He peeled back the bandages on Zabuza's abdomen.

"I'm fucking fine," groaned Zabuza. "Just didn't expect t'see those giant fucking fangs first thing."

"You pulled your stitches," Shisui scolded, picking at the loose threads.

"Fuck you," Zabuza growled, and then, "I know."

Kakashi leaned over. "No smell of rot," he noted. "No sign of infection; that's good."

"Thank the gods," Shisui muttered. "Kami knows this was the least sterile environment we could possibly manage. No offense, San."

San shrugged indifferently. "I can sew the stitches again," she offered.

Shisui looked at her askance, possibly because of her person-sewing comments the first time around, but Kakashi nodded. "Thank you, San. Momochi, if you're alert, I need your report."

"I'm alert," Zabuza grunted.

"I'm going to get the kids started on training," Shisui yawned. "And then sleep for another three hours. Later, Z, San. Taichou." He snapped off a half-lazy salute at Kakashi and wandered back out.

San picked through the supplies for the needle and thread. She had put everything back into Shisui's medical pack, but she had not known how to organize it, so it was merely a glorified bucket at the moment. Packets of dried herbs warred with rolls of bandages and tubes of unknown liquids for space. She wrinkled her nose and fished out a roll of bandages with the suturing supplies.

"I was on contract, outta the mercenary missions office in Tsumago," Zabuza began, and San could see him eyeing her suspiciously out of the corner of his eye. "Took a mission from Yasuo Yoshida."

Kakashi frowned. "A minor lord in Rice," he commented.

"Yeah," agreed Zabuza. "Some kind of antique collector. Wanted a piece of jewelry stolen from a merchant who refused to sell it to him. Merchant hired a chuunin squad from Iwa to guard his things as he moved around Taki, so he wanted to hire a jounin. Two, actually, but he didn't want to shell out for it. Bunch of chuunin, piece of cake." He grimaced. "Only, someone else hired a different nuke-nin to gank the merchant. No big deal, I wait 'til he's actively trying to kill the guy and go in while the chuunin are distracted, but it turned out this nuke-nin just robbed an outpost in Kiri and the hunter-nin were after him. The Iwa squad called for backup and the entire thing became a giant clusterfu - mess."

"Did they identify you?"

"Did they - I've got one of Kiri's seven famous swords, Hata - sir , of course they recognized me!"

"You can stop calling me that," said Kakashi, a pained look on what was visible of his face. "No need to hurt yourself."

Zabuza's eyes glinted. "You going to make me?"

San stuck the needle in his side. "Sorry," she said when he twitched. "Your pack is quite odd, Kakashi."

"Shove it, wolf-girl," growled Zabuza.

"Continue," Kakashi directed.

"I took down one chuunin, other nuke-nin took down another before the hunter-nin squad arrived. Iwa squad retreated. Four Kiri hunter-nin, good enough at maneuvering in a silent mist, killed the other nuke-nin, and managed to put aside their differences with the squad of Iwa Anbu that showed up until I was dead." His derisive tone showed just what he thought about that. "I didn't want to leave any able to follow me," Zabuza continued, "so I fought. Damn near killed them all. Took the rest on a run through Kusa." He paused, frowned. "Completed the mission, too," he added. "Box in my pack. Someone better turn it in, deadline's tomorrow at sunset."

"Right," said Kakashi slowly. "Itachi backtracked to the ambush site. The merchant made it out alive, but Iwa and Kiri both took heavy losses. Looks like both sides just wanted to clean up, because they cleared their people out and and didn't seem too keen on hunting you down."

"Didn't want to lose any more shinobi." Zabuza bared his teeth in a grin. "Kiri's about to be real short on 'em."

"Done," San announced, slicing the thread with a kunai. She handed Kakashi the roll of bandages, and Zabuza hauled himself upright into a sitting position so he could wrap his abdomen.

"You're fine," Kakashi said. "Move back to your bunk if you can without ruining the stitches again. I'll send someone to finish the mission." He handed the leftover bandages back to San and stood.

Zabuza grunted. "I might have gotten ahold something else too," he added - his voice smug and just a little guilty.

Kakashi paused in the entrance. "What did you steal?" he asked, resigned.

"You know that blonde brat that Shisui has? The girl?" Zabuza hedged, "And how I keep sayin' she just needs something to bludgeon shit with? Well," he said, as Kakashi nodded warily, "one of the chuunin on the Iwa squad was from the Senpuu clan and had something he kept swinging around carelessly so I took it - "

"Momochi," interrupted Kakashi deliberately. "Did you steal an heirloom battle fan from the Senpuu clan heir and kill him ?"

Zabuza paused. "The heir? I don't know, he looked pretty wimpy, but his fuuton weren't bad. Fuck, fine," he conceded, when Kakashi narrowed his eye. "I stole a battle fan - which I did not know was an heirloom - but I didn't kill the guy. He's one of the ones that ran for help. I probably shouldn't have let him do that," he reflected, frowning, then caught sight of Kakashi's face again. "Or I should have?"

"Not killing him was a good move," said Kakashi. "The Senpuu are notorious for their blood feuds."

"Good," said Zabuza. "Great. So, just give that thing to the girl and she can figure it out."

Kakashi looked blank as usual, but San could tell he desperately wanted to strangle Zabuza, bash his own head open on the rocks, or take a nap and forget about everything. "This will not happen again," he warned Zabuza, and walked out.

"You're fucking welcome," Zabuza muttered under his breath. He made to stand up and stopped short, glaring down at his bandaged side. "Help me up, wolf-girl, I'm out of here."

Before Kakashi's pack, San and her siblings had lived a comfortable, slow life in their Mother's forest. There was no threat except for the humans that ventured into their woods every so often, intent on killing a trophy, but were summarily chased off with no great effort. Instead their days were regularly filled with mock-fighting, teasing the kodama, roaming the edges of their territory, and gathering supplies when necessary. They did not want for anything, nor did they fear attack.

With the pups, however, a curl of protective instincts took root in San's stomach and would not budge, and Chie and Yuuki humored her antics with amused tolerance. There were a great many things to do, with Kakashi's pack taking up residence in their forest. There were creatures to hunt and furs to gather for the pups to line their beds, masks to carve and knives to whittle. She could teach them to strip entire carcasses of everything useful and cure a hide. She could watch Kakashi's pack teach the pups hunting techniques and hiding techniques and shinobi techniques.

Today, Shisui had all nine pups gathered in the hollow with him as he sat crosslegged atop the snow, explaining something very earnestly and gesturing animatedly with both hands. The pups arrayed themselves in a semicircle around him, varying from intent (Temari) to hesitant (Hinata) to thoroughly distracted (Naruto). San propped herself up on Yuuki's head, far above the hollow on the lip of the cliff, and watched.

"Go you not down to watch?" rumbled Yuuki, peering down into the hollow with interest.

"Go you not down?" San retorted. "Go I with you, if you do."

Yuuki heaved an aggravated sigh. "Very well," he said grumpily, but his tail swished to betray his anticipation. "Up here, cannot hear, from the wind. Flicker-smoke-shadow very interesting, teaching." Instead of wandering back around through the caves, he leaned over the side of the cliff and placed an experimental paw on the face of the rock. San shuffled back onto his shoulders as he padded down into the hollow.

Shisui saw them coming - he could not avoid it, since Yuuki was rather large and stood out despite his white coat blending in with the snow. He nodded to them once, absently, before returning his eyes to pups as they reshuffled, standing now in haphazard groups. "Neji-kun - farmer's son, rebellious, picks fights with other kids," he said, as Yuuki sidled up next to him.

The pups paid them no mind - San liked to watch their practices, so this was nothing new to them. Neji stepped forward, hesitated, and dropped his cloak to the side to the chorus of "oooh!" from the younger pups. He ruffed up his hair, hunched, and gave his best glare. San was reminded of the geese who stood guard over their nests in spring and threatened to bite any who ventured near.

"Good," said Shisui, drumming his fingers on the side of his face thoughtfully. "But try to look sullen and not aggressive. Let's have you walk to the river and back."

Shinobi were truly strange creatures. Neji normally walked gracefully on light feet, upright but ready to weather what came. Now, he plowed heavily through the snow, flat-footed, his head bobbing like a duck's with every step.

" Ningen ," murmured Yuuki, pure bafflement in his tone. "Why not prowl when one can prowl?" He shuffled a little in the snow, tamping it down so he could lie in it more comfortably. "Anger-leap-bird stalks well enough."

"To prowl, to not prowl," mused San. "Shinobi teach both. Play at helplessness, like when you want Chie hunt you dinner and you not help. This much though?" She shook her head. "This I understand not."

"All right," said Shisui, even as Yuuki hummed agreement. "I'm a police officer, and I've just caught you skulking around somewhere off limits. A nobleman's estate. I ask you: what's your name?"

Neji hesitated for a heartbeat. "Hiro," he said, surly.

"Common name, good," said Shisui. "What are you doing here, Hiro?"

He shrugged. "I dunno," he said stiffly.

"Wrong," Shisui shot back. "That makes you look suspicious. It'll get you detained, and you don't want any closer scrutiny. Try again."

Neji frowned, a quicksilver slip, and settled back into his slouch. "I was bored," he drawled. "The gate was open so I entered to look."

"Watch your word choice. You're supposed to be a farmer's kid, not much education," Shisui warned, "but that was better. The biggest thing here is to remember who you're supposed to be. Don't drop character, ever, even if you think you're made." He surveyed the rest of the kids, choosing and discarding on some unknown criteria. "Naruto-kun, want to give it a shot?"

"Yeah!" Naruto agreed enthusiastically. "Can I be a samurai? Oh, oh, can I be a daimyo?"

"No," said Shisui patiently, as San hid a smile and Sakura slapped a hand to her eyes behind him. "The point of this is to fade into the background so you're less conspicuous. If you pretend to be a samurai or a daimyo, there's a bigger chance someone will know you're lying." He paused, and eyed Naruto, who had gone from sulky to bewildered, his face nearly screwed up on itself. "Yes?"

"What's conspecialist?"

" Conspicuous means obvious. Like you stick out." Shisui was, San noted with amusement, a hundred times more patient than Zabuza was. Zabuza probably would have ignored him entirely or snarled something uncomplimentary and made him do pushups. "Okay, you're an apprentice blacksmith. You don't talk much but you're strong and polite. Got it?"

"Yeah!" Naruto enthused, then caught Shisui's pointed look. He puffed up his chest, swung his arms loose at his side, and strutted through the snow with his skinny rear sticking out. "Need help with that?" he asked an imaginary passerby with a comically deep voice.

Shisui blinked once, slow and exasperated, as the rest of the pups stifled giggles. "Naruto," he began, then stopped and closed his eyes again. "You're trying to hide, not stand out more," he said, long-suffering. "Don't arch your back, stand up straight. If you're doing this in the field, make sure you only offer help to someone if it would help you build your cover. Don't adopt a mannerism that would make you stand out - no kid has a voice that deep."

Naruto pouted, folding his arms across his chest. "This is stupid!" he declared. "No one even knows what I sound like! Why can't I just be me and dress up like a prendice black-sniff? Ow!" he yelped, as Sakura smacked the back of his head.

"Idiot," grumbled Sasuke.

"Did you not listen to Shisui-sensei's lecture?" demanded Neji. "He covered it in great detail."

"The point of adopting an entirely different identity is both so nobody recognizes you , and so that when the mission's over, nobody remembers you outside that identity," said Shisui patiently. "You're a shinobi, so that puts a target on your back. As an apprentice blacksmith, you can be expected to go places other people can't, and even places where they don't want shinobi to go." He paused, eyeing Naruto suspiciously. "I don't need to go over why you need to make sure nobody recognizes you, right?"

Stifled groans from the pups. Gaara narrowed his eyes dangerously. "No," Naruto sulked. "Because everyone wants to kill all my friends and there's too many to fight them all off."

"Okay, we'll go with that," said Shisui, with a half-grimace. San snorted. "Try it again, but imagine you're in a town to back up a different team, so you're laying low."

Naruto huffed. "Prendice black-sniff, okay." He screwed his face up. This time, his movements were less jerky as he strode through the snow. He gave Shisui a mostly-serious nod.

"Better," Shisui said approvingly.

"Better?" Yuuki huffed in disbelief. "Looks the same, smells the same, he, how a disguise is this?"

"Practice moving only," San scolded, tugging at his ear. "Disguise later. Hush."

"Alright, same deal as Neji," Shisui said over their muttered conversation. "I'm a police officer who found you in a nobleman's estate. Hey! You there!"

Naruto turned, glanced back at Shisui, and kept walking at the same pace.

"That's not a good move if you can tell they're addressing you," Shisui warned. "You look more suspicious." He changed his tone again. "What do you think you're doing in here?"

"I'm here for the horseshoes," said Naruto, voice pitched low but nowhere near as deep as the first time he'd tried.

"Good, but try again. Just a little more detail, next time. Why are you looking for the horseshoes?"

"I'm here for the broken horseshoes," Naruto amended. "I was told to pick them up here. To repair," he added, when Shisui opened his mouth again. "Later." And he glared at Sasuke when he snorted.

"Okay," said Shisui. "That's fine, Naruto-kun. We'll work on delivery later." He clapped his hands together. "Next, let's have…" He eyed the pups thoughtfully, as San and Yuuki did the same behind him. "How about Hinata-chan?" The girl twitched, but Temari gave her an encouraging pat on the shoulder, and carefully, Hinata edged forward. She twisted her hands in front of her anxiously, bunching in the folds of her cloak until she caught Neji's glare and let go abruptly.

"There's no pressure," Shisui said kindly. "Just do your best."

"H-hai," Hinata whispered.

Shisui paused, considering her carefully. "Hinata-chan, you're a wealthy merchant's daughter who dreams of marrying into nobility. You believe you deserve be treated as nobility and you don't tolerate perceived disrespect."

Hinata's shoulders hunched, and her eyes darted towards the other pups. "A-ano, I-I - "

"Take your time," Shisui encouraged. "Forget about everyone else. Just think about who you're supposed to be. What are you feeling? What are you proud of? What makes you happy, or sad, or angry?"

Hinata closed her eyes as he spoke. Gradually, her breathing evened out, and she straightened out of her hunch and she lifted her chin. Her hands fell to her sides, easy and natural, and she shifted her weight, pulling her shoulders back. Yuuki sat up to get a better look. San felt her eyebrows rising, and she leaned forward almost unconsciously. Something had happened in the girl, something had changed. The shuffling of shinobi pups stilled.

"Again," said Shisui, in the same calm voice, "I'm a police officer who has found you on a nobleman's property." He pitched his voice deeper. "Hey, you there! You can't be in here."

Hinata opened her eyes and stared straight at Shisui. Her eyes were cold and narrowed, and her mouth twisted into a little sneer. "Who are you to tell me what to do?"

San jerked back in shock. Haku blinked. Neji's mouth actually dropped open as Sai frowned thoughtfully. Sakura and Naruto exchanged wide-eyed glances, the former disbelieving and the latter gleeful. Gaara's head tilted curiously, and Temari's hand froze mid-stroke through her brother's hair.

"What the actual fuck," said Sasuke into the stunned silence.

"Watch your language, you little monster," scolded Shisui without heat. Like everyone else, his attention was on Hinata, studying her posture, her poise, her unwavering glare. "I'm with the police," he addressed her directly, "and you're trespassing on private property."

The girl sniffed, flipping back her hair with a toss of her hair. "If it were private, then you should have kept the gate closed!" she retorted, and flounced off through the snow.

Another heartbeat of complete silence as Hinata stopped just at the river's edge.

"Hinata-chan," Shisui said at last. "That was - "

"Totally awesome!" Naruto roared, throwing up snow in both hands in his enthusiasm. "That was the coolest thing ever! You just - and, and - " he waved his hands helplessly. Beside him, Sakura nodded dumbly.

" - incredible," Shisui finished, ignoring the ranting pup. He stared still at Hinata, a strange expression on his face, as though she were a puzzle he was just now putting together.

Hinata turned around, stepping back up on top of the snow, face pink and shoulders slowly climbing back up to her head. There was nothing remaining of what had just happened, who she had become. "A-ah, t-thank you," she murmured, looking as if she wanted nothing more than to sink back into the snow and hide from the attention.

"That which hides but changes its shape to enter where it is not permitted. Clever girl," San noted, leaning back against her brother. "A turtle, yes, but something else as well. A snake." She rolled the words around in her head, testing. "Genbu, Guardian of the North." Nine heads swivelled towards San curiously, and she realized she'd said it in the ningen tongue.

"Genbu," Temari repeated, eyes drifting back towards Hinata thoughtfully. "That sounds familiar."

San frowned and looked to Shisui, who shrugged goodnaturedly and waved at her to go ahead. "He is one of the four great guardian spirits. Genbu is the Dark Warrior, Guardian of the North," she explained, "he who guards the virtue of knowledge, enshrouded in darkness and shadow. He is both a turtle and a snake at once, and he reigns over winter. He represents longevity and intelligence." There was something unspoken happening in the pack of pups - the same wordless communication in meaningful looks and microexpressions that San and her siblings used, and even Naruto was quiet.

"Byakko, the White Tiger, is the Guardian of the West," she continued. "He rules the battlefield and the wind, and courage is his mantle. He is the protector, the bringer of autumn. Suzaku, Guardian of the South, is the Vermillion Bird. She is summer, heat and fire, ruler of all that flies. Seiryuu, the Azure Dragon, he who safeguards the East. He is blue and green and spring and ferocity, and his dominion is authority."

There was another pause when San finished as the pups shot each other glances that varied from curious to blank to proprietary.

"Dibs on Seiryuu," Sasuke said quickly.

"Uh, nope," Temari fired back. "Weren't you the one so proud of your fire nature?"

"Temari-nee, you're the one who's super proud that she can fly now!" Naruto shrilled.

"I just started learning two hours ago, and Sai can fly too," she pointed out. "And you don't see us going after Genbu because of Haku's genkai kekkei."

"None other are as clearly suited for Genbu as we are," said Sai, folding his arms across his chest. His normally blank face was challenging now as he stood between Gaara - faintly predatory - and Hinata, peeking timidly at the others, a faint blush high on her cheeks.

Shisui met San's puzzled stare over the heads of the pups, his own eyes fond and exasperated. "My fault," he said wryly. "I told them to pick team names earlier."

The sun spent more time in the sky above the trees, these days, and the frozen rivers swelled and crackled before bursting forth in showers of icy water. San watched one such event as it happened, bracketed on either side by Yuuki and Chie and with golden-coated Shiba sprawled at her feet. "Snow-melt begins," she said unnecessarily, and turned away from the omen. There was much to do before the snow vanished completely, and not enough time to mourn what it meant.

The camp was empty, when they returned. It was no longer unusual, but San felt a strange pang of wrongness, not seeing the pups dogpiled around the fire. There was only Shisui, drumming his heels absently atop the watch ledge. She peeled off from her siblings and Shiba as they wandered to their den, where Akino and Uhei lay sunning themselves in the dying rays, and leapt up to join him. "No pups today, still," she noted, settling behind him.

"No," Shisui agreed. The wind ruffled his hair, tugging unruly tufts down over his crooked headband, and the setting sun lent his eye a molten glow. "Team Genbu's doing a quick run around the border, Itachi-kun and Team Byakko are still running supplies for one of the cells moving out of Ishi, and Zabuza and Team Suzaku are raiding a trade caravan."

"Developed a taste for that, Zabuza," San said dryly.

Shisui rolled his eye. "Don't let him hear you say that. I think he's overcompensating or something, but the captain says it's a good thing because that's the only way we get enough flak jackets and ration bars for everyone. Plus, it's good practice for the kids."

"Not fighting, I thought," said San, frowning. "Were you not planning to keep the pups out of the war?"

Shisui sighed, tired. "We were. We still are," he corrected. "But if it comes down to it - " He shrugged. "Team Suzaku is the best suited to fight. Haku has his mirrors, and Temari has her fan, so they can get away quickly if they need to." His fingers tapped absently against the rock. The sun crept ever lower on the horizon as they watched in companionable silence.

"Do not leave without warning," San said abruptly. "I would give you a gift before you go." She slid her gaze over to watch him. "All of you."

His face was pensive, half-obscured by the headband as he tilted his head forward. "It's those wolf masks, isn't it?" he said, an amused light in his eye. "I've seen them in the cave."

"Masks are for pups only, when cloth and bandages they hide their faces with now are not enough," San said dismissively. "You are no pup." She paused and reconsidered. "You are less of a pup," she corrected, and bared her teeth in a grin as he shoved her lightly. "Yours is not yet finished," she said. "But I should like that you remember me and Chie and Yuuki when you go."

Shisui smiled, a small, rare thing. "You're hard to forget," he said.

San turned away again, hunching over her legs and propping her chin up in her hand. "You are not so easy to forget, yourself." Her siblings and the ninken had retreated into the sleeping den, as the temperature dropped with the sun. Kakashi's ninken pack slept in the warm furs in San's den, when he was away - and these days, he was away more than he was here. Soon, he would be gone entirely, and with each river that swelled and burst and tumbled down the mountainside, that day drew closer. "This is the part where things change," she said aloud, and she couldn't quite keep the mournfulness from her tone.

Shisui met her eyes wearily. "Yeah," he said. "This is the part where everything changes."

One night, San lifted her head from Chie's side and Kakashi was there, silhouetted in the moonlight spilling into the den. She glanced up and all around her was Kakashi's ninken pack - all eight of them, entangled in Yuuki's paws, a head and legs thrown over Chie's back, radiating out like the battle-fans she'd carved for Hinata out of a moose's rack. All eight of them, entangled in San's own pack, and the last standing at the entrance. He jerked his head towards the outside, and she rolled to her feet and followed him out.

"It is time," San noted, as they padded through the clearing. There was no snow anymore, just a bite in the air and damp dirt to mark the season that had passed.

Kakashi nodded just once, and his bone-white armor and unruly hair gleamed in the moonlight that streamed down unfiltered. "We leave tomorrow," he confirmed. "Most of our forces have mobilized already. I don't want anyone to know we have Shisui or the Last Four, so we're the last."

San hummed absently and reached up to push his crooked headband up his forehead. He let her, staring down at her curiously. "I would see your eyes," she said solemnly when he didn't open the scarred eyelid.

"This is the only eye that is mine," Kakashi responded.

A hint of a growl built up in her chest, but she swallowed it back down. "Packmate mine," she warned. "Do not forget that you are not broken. A gift given made you even more than whole. I would see your eyes."

Slowly, reluctantly, Kakashi slid his eyelid and regarded San with mismatched eyes. "Satisfied?"

San stared up at him soberly, memorizing the slant of his eyes, the faint glow of the fire-shadow-wheel as it swirled lazily and the deep onyx of the other. Faces - those changed; noses grew, jaws sharpened, cheeks collected scars. Eyes, though - Kakashi's eyes were the same and different all at the same time. They were sharp and intelligent and tired and resolved, his shields lowered for her, in this moment, this night in the early spring before he left her behind once again. San would remember his eyes when he was gone. "Satisfied," she said softly, and he reached up to pull the headband back down. "You will not return," she said, a statement more than a question.

"No," Kakashi agreed. "I will not."

Because even if he won this war, there was another to be fought, and even if he won that one as well, even if he survived, Kakashi would have a greater responsibility than just his little pack. It was not a responsibility that would suffer him to return to San's mother's forest in the land the ningen called Tetsu, or even one that would suffer him to enter Tetsu at all. "I will not see you again, packmate mine," she said.

"No," said Kakashi again. "I don't think you will."

San did not cup him by the back of the neck or press her forehead to his, because though she was wolf and he was Hatake and pack, he was shinobi and shinobi did not do well with such gestures. "Go well," she said instead. "You have my mother's favor." She reached up and pulled off the fang that hung on twine around her neck, one of the four that had ringed her throat on the cord of her cloak, that her mother had given her when she was a child and had nothing in the world but two dead ningen parents. She held it out to him.

He took it gently, and at her nod pulled it over his own head until it swung gently atop his armor. "Thank you, San," he said. "You risked a lot, taking us all in just to repay a debt."

"Do not insult me, Kakashi," San grumbled, narrowing her eyes at him. "You are pack, and that a debt I would repay a thousand times over." She glanced away, across the moonlit hollow to the den where the pups slumbered. "Take care of them," she ordered. "They - and you - always have a home here."

On some unspoken signal, San heard the light flutter of many paws, and she turned to see the eight hounds of Kakashi's pack stream from her sleeping den, padding on light paws to where the pair stood at the edge of the hollow. "You are leaving now," she noted, as Uhei nudged her affectionately and Guruko stood up on his hind paws to shove a cold nose in her hair and Urushi brushed the length of his body against her side.

"We're going first, to make sure the path is safe," agreed Kakashi as Yuuki and Chie emerged last of all, the yellow of their eyes stark against the faint glow of their snowy pelts. "The others will follow tomorrow at dawn." San felt her heart swell with emotions she could not name at the sight of her pack - the last time her pack would all be together.

"Go well, Kakashi-ningen," rumbled Yuuki, swinging his muzzle around to nudge at Kakashi's shoulder.

"May the wind guide your paws and sharpen your fangs, Kakashi-wolf," added Chie, twining through the ninken and around Kakashi.

And Kakashi, her strong, stubborn packmate Kakashi, nodded at them simply. "Go," he told his ninken quietly, and San and Yuuki and Chie watched as in one body, one pack, Kakashi and Pakkun and Akino and all the rest leapt across the clearing to the caves that would lead them into their territory and out of their mother's forest for the last time.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Hinata Has An Early Life Identity Crisis

Starring Hyuuga Hinata in the curious case of the girl who could be anyone but herself.

* * *

MISSION REPORT D-72

Per last report, targets AT1, AT3, AT4 and allied noncombatant NCHS positioned in [REDACTED] base under care of ACHN and ACNS. Current status unknown.

Operative Cat-15 experienced physical fatigue, slight depletion of chakra, contusion to left shoulder, fracture to middle right rib. Status adequate.

With AT2. Established base in inn room in [REDACTED].

Operative CAT-15 established undercover identity of traveler caught unaware in snowstorm. Achieved employment at public stables for 100 ryo per day. Income sustainable if supplemented by street theft. Accompanied to employment by AT2.

AT2 expressed following symptoms: cough, congestion, fatigue.

Purchased: eucalyptus salve, green tea, honey, chicken broth.

Goal: alleviate symptoms of sickness in AT2. Remain undercover in [REDACTED] until AT2 has recovered. Procure necessary nutritional supplies for AT2 to continue projected age-appropriate growth.

Goal: rendezvous with targets AT1, AT3, AT4, allied noncombatant NCHS, and allied combatants ACHN and ACNS to ensure continued security and wellbeing.

No contact with enemy combatants.

No contact with allied combatants.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

* * *

The mantle of Hyuuga Hinata, firstborn daughter of Hyuuga Hiashi, heiress to the noble Hyuuga Clan, inheritor of the strongest doujutsu and most powerful taijutsu in the Elemental Nations, she who will hold the fate of her entire clan in her hands was a heavy one to bear. It bowed her shoulders and weighed down her tongue until she hunched under the former and stumbled over the latter. It dogged her footsteps and loomed over her until she cowered in its shadow, unable to break free.

Matsui Moe, however, had no concerns besides filling her belly and having fun and finding a safe place to sleep at night. She struggled with none of these, because despite having no parents, Moe was a cheerful, charming girl, and whenever she snagged an apple from the fruit cart on one of the market corners, the storekeeper pretended not to notice.

Hinata liked being Moe. Nobody expected anything from Moe, and her life was hard but comfortable. Like any port city, Kitakyushu had its fair share of street urchins running around its streets, and its citizens never blinked when one or two appeared or quietly vanished. She went where she pleased and nobody questioned what she was doing perched on the low wall just before the harbor, looking out towards the docks because the townspeople knew little Moe liked watching the sailors and the ships come in and go back out to sea.

She swung her legs absently, blinking away the sting as the sea breeze brushed tangled strands of hair into her face. Four hulking ships bobbed at the shore today, looming over the docks at which they were tied. Two sat idle, deserted as its sailors enjoyed the food and beds and other pleasures of solid land. The other two buzzed with activity, one offloading and the other onloading. The distant figures scurried to and fro, swinging up and down the rigging, maneuvering huge crates from deck to shore or shore to deck, and clustering and scattering just as quickly.

The years spent with Neko-sensei, before Itachi-sensei had found them, had taught Hinata that street children truly were the ones who knew the goings-on in towns. It was in part why the Hidden Villages valued child prodigies as much as they did - rare as they were, no other could move so easily and gather so much valuable information as a child. Civilians did not suspect children, and even if shinobi did, there were simply far too many leftover, forgotten children to police them all, and certainly no one to feed them or take them off the streets, though civilians would undoubtedly protest if the children were culled.

It was no great struggle to return to the streets - easier now, that she was Moe and not a hunted heiress. Moe was free to meet the eyes of the other townspeople with her brown-not-white eyes, to smile winningly at them in a way Hinata never would have dared. She wore Moe like the colored lenses and the hair dye and tattered, worn shirt that went with her persona.

"Moe-chan!"

Moe turned, eyes crinkling automatically in a smile as the other girl waved at her. "Ohaiyo, Ida-nee," she said cheerfully, and pointed back towards the ships. "Look, there's four today!"

"I see that," Ida said indulgently. "Come on, Moe-chan, you can't spend all your time just watching the ships. Kiyomi-baa-san gave out some biscuits earlier and they were only a little burnt."

"Oh," Moe said wistfully. "I like her biscuits."

The other girl beamed and pulled out a package from behind her back. "I brought you one!"

Moe gasped in delight and reached for the biscuit, then hesitated, biting her lip. "I don't have anything yet," she admitted.

"I know," said Ida, rolling her eyes, and shoved the biscuit at her. "You can make it up to me tonight."

"Tomorrow?" Moe hedged hopefully, opening the package with greedy hands. "The Kagamaru is still unloading, and I was planning on trying the south district again today."

Ida sniffed. "You'll never catch me down there. Everyone knows that's where the shinobi are - they're stingy, and they'll kill you if they think you're spying? You're lucky you're still young enough to not look suspicious."

"I'll bring you back something tomorrow," Moe promised, stuffing half the biscuit into her mouth and chewing as fast as she could. "It's a Thursday," she said, muffled, "so that fish restaurant's throwing out the old stuff."

"Fried pollack or no deal, Moe-chan," Ida warned, plucking the cloth back out of Hinata's hands and tipping her head back for the last crumbs. "I can't keep just feeding you for free."

"Yes, Ida-nee."

Moe would have to steal the fried pollack, she mused, watching the older girl saunter away. Every city was different, but the street kids in every city had a code, a hierarchy, and Ida held a lot of sway as the younger sister of one of the drug runners for the Chokoto Syndicate. Moe herself had found herself vaguely under the teen's protection in exchange for choice foods from the more dangerous south district.

She leaned forward, bracing her hands against the low stone wall on which she sat, and watched as the command crew of the Kagamaru convened just past the docks. The merchant ship was a regular; Moe herself had seen the vessel six times in the two months she'd been in Kitakyushu, and some of the other kids had heard from an acquaintance of an acquaintance that it had returned with the same frequency every month for years.

Eventually, the movement of crewpeople slowed to a trickle as the setting sun lit the surface of the water with its golden rays. She drummed her heels briefly against the stone wall and hopped down. There was nothing more to see here, so she picked her way back into the town proper.

Moe darted between a pair of ox-drawn carts, ducked a woman balancing a basket of potatoes, and dodged a kick aimed at her by an irate storekeeper. That baa-san hated when she and the other kids ran through the square, hated all the street rats polluting Kitakyushu. For that same reason, she was Moe's favorite store to pickpocket. She always had stone fruit, no matter what the season, and Moe loved stone fruits - peaches and plums were her favorite.

She didn't have time to swipe one today, though, not if she wanted to get through the Kumata Gauntlet before nightfall - and only the dumbest street rats let themselves get caught in that strip between the central and southern districts in full dark. Most didn't come back. Those that did were missing a part of themselves - if not in body, then in mind.

Moe hesitated, just on the near side of the stone arch preceding the Kumata. Dilapidated warehouses yawned on either side, rough-hewn stone and scratched glass concealing the favored haunts of the drug-mafiosos, people-traffickers, and hunter-smugglers. Moe had never been in those herself, but Ida's friend's rival's youngest cousin had run through the closest one on a dare once and come back shaking and white as plaster, physically unharmed but unable to speak a single word. Three days later, he threw himself off the midtown bridge and drowned. That had been enough for most of the street rats to stay out of the South district - no matter how good or rare, food was not worth losing one's mind. Besides the Kumata Gauntlet, there was only the Hisato Thoroughfare to get there, and that had guards posted at all times specifically to keep rabble like her out. Supposedly, it was to prevent robbery, but everyone knew it was to keep the gutter trash away from the rich people.

The supply wagons, however, were only permitted in the Kumata, so it was safe enough to travel as long as other people were around and the sun still shone. And it did, if weakly, so Moe took a deep breath and scurried through the archway in tandem with the cured meats merchant in his rickety mule-drawn cart.

The wind swept between buildings, hissing eerily across the Kumata and lashing against Moe's face. Something clanged in the shadows and she flinched, straining her eyes in the direction of the sound, but there was nothing there. Something small and dark darted down a side alley. "Hey there, darlin'," drawled a voice from the opposite side, and Moe instinctively ducked so the cart was between her and the voice.

The Kumata was long, but the leering eyes that stared out at her languidly did nothing as long as Moe stayed in the shadow of the meat merchant's cart. At the far side, she ducked into a side alley as the merchant took the main road, her feet lighter and the air filling her lungs more easily now that she'd made it into the South district safely. The back-alley streets here were worn and familiar, their shadows comforting instead of sinister.

She trotted down the alley between the barbecue restaurant and the silk shop and took a sharp right, where a set of stairs descended sharply into the storm cellar beneath the grocery store that'd been shut down due to a rat infestation. The door at the bottom was locked, but Moe slid out the bent hairpins she kept in the cloth wrapped around her arm and picked it deftly. It creaked open, spilling light from the distant street lamps into the cellar, and she plucked the electric lantern from its hook next to the doorframe and hurried down the concrete steps.

The door clanged shut behind her, and then the only light came from the swinging lantern in her hand. She set it down on the rickety table at the bottom, humming absently as she turned towards the corner she'd piled a nest of blankets in. Under it, she had a can of green beans, one of chicken, and a handful of packages of crackers -

Out of the corner of her eye, a shadow detached itself from the rest and Moe whirled, stifling a gasp.

"All clear. No tails," he said, voice low. "Do you have anything to report?"

She blinked hard twice, three times, each time closing her eyes longer than the previous. She took a deep, fortifying breath. "N-no," said Hinata. "N-nothing out o-of the o-ordinary."

"Gaara is in the sewers still." Sai handed her her mask and cloak. "We have twenty minutes until check-in."

"H-hai," she acknowledged, bringing the bone-mask up to her face. She swung the cloak over her shoulders and pulled the hood over her head. With a soft click, she turned off the lantern, leaving it on the table as she led the way up the second set of stairs into the store itself.

The store was less dark, dim light filtering in from the outside to light the bare metal shelves. Hinata ghosted past them to the stockrooms, where the stench of blood still hung over sloped floors. She pried up the grate at the center and peered down into the yawning darkness. She let herself drop, the damp, fetid air rushing past her as she fell through the black. She landed lightly atop the water with just a shift of chakra. Above her, the metal grate clicked back into place, and she moved aside so Sai could touch down beside her.

A low hiss. A tiny flame bloomed in the darkness, and above them, a pair of green eyes glowed from behind a white bone-mask. "The sewers are still empty," Gaara announced, annoyance betrayed in the way his eyes flickered towards the rust-red hair plastered against his mask.

"Acknowledged," said Sai. "We will proceed to base camp. Hinata?"

Her Byakugan activated in a blink and a small pulse of chakra, muffled by the concrete around her so even the enemy shinobi in the district would think it only the erratic fluctuation of an untrained civilian. The entire sewer system bloomed before her eyes, and far above, the bustling labyrinths of the streets.

That wasn't important, though. She stretched her sight along the sewer tunnels. "T-there's some f-flooding and t-two b-blockages," she said. "T-the d-direct line under the K-Kumata G-Gauntlet is c-completely i-impassable."

"I cut through the dry tunnels on the west side," said Gaara, deeply resentful with just the suggestion of a snarl. "Many needles."

Hinata repressed a shudder. "S-s-sorry," she said meekly, swallowing as his eyes narrowed.

"If it was the only way to tail Hinata, it had to be done," Sai said dismissively. "Base camp is to the northeast. We will not have to pass through the dry tunnels again, and when the tide rises, it will likely clear the blockages. Take point, Hinata."

"H-hai," agreed Hinata, and stepped carefully across the surface of the water.

The journey was largely quiet, interrupted only by their footsteps tapping on the water, the skittering of Sai's otherwise-silent ink sentry rats, and the occasional agitated shift of sand from the massive knapsack slung across Gaara's back. The air changed, blowing in on them with a fresher, saltier edge to the oppressive mugginess of the sewers.

Hinata stretched out her vision again, to the sea, the beach, the base camp, and her focus divided, almost walked into the grate. She stopped short before her mask hit the slimy metal, and her attention snapped back to her immediate surroundings. "I-it's clear," she said.

"Gaara," Sai prompted, then added, " gently ."

Hinata's widened field of vision let her see Gaara's narrowed eyes, if not the rest of his face beneath the mask, but she knew he was scowling. He gestured, short and abrupt, and tendrils of sand snaked out to pry at the grate.

The debris that had been caught in the grate swept out in a rush, and all three of them swayed as the water level dropped. Sai made the plunge first, taking a running start and sliding feet first, nearly horizontal, through the narrow tube. Hinata followed, pressing her eyes and mouth shut and pushing against either side of the tube to propel herself through the sludgy water. Not a heartbeat later, the breath was stolen from her lungs as the tube dropped out from beneath her. She opened her eyes and landed on her feet, stumbling forward a few steps to stand beside Sai as Gaara followed her out, twisting midair like a cat and landing on all fours.

"Disgusting," Gaara spat, shaking the water out of his hair and waving his hand to replace the grate amid a hiss of sand.

Sai dripped discontentedly. "It is our best option while the main sewer lines undergo maintenance," he said.

"A-ano, c-could we s-stop to c-clean o-off before w-we go b-back?" Hinata suggested, discreetly flicking sewer water from the hem of her cloak.

"Yes," agreed Sai. "I believe that is also our best option."

With a faint crusting of salt from their hastily-taken and hastily-dried dip in the ocean, they reported for their check-in with about fifteen seconds to spare. Their base camp had been an abandoned mine, forgotten years ago when the tunnels collapsed. Now, with the addition of discreet air vents, it served as a Hanabi-ha center of operations. A very small, distant center of operations with only a small impact on the overall war effort in Kiri, but busy nonetheless.

Shisui-sensei raised an eyebrow at them as they pulled off their masks, crunching faintly as the fabric of their cloaks shifted. "Cutting it close, Team Genbu," he noted.

"Ready to report," Sai responded, standing a little straighter. Hinata fidgeted with the mask in her hands, sliding her fingers absently over its smooth surface.

"Go for it," said Shisui-sensei, leaning back against the rough-hewn counter and crossing his arms.

"A nuke-nin team arrived in the South district in the afternoon, around 1650 hours," Sai recounted. "No pursuers, no visible injuries. One male from Ishigakure, one male from Sunagakure, one female from Takigakure. Likely at least chuunin, if they still wear their hitai-ate. The Sunagakure male is likely a sensor; he sensed my sumi rats but couldn't trace them back to me."

Shisui-sensei nodded thoughtfully. "It can't be helped," he said. "Kitakyushu is neutral, so mutual spying is not unexpected. As long as they don't follow you back, there should be no problem. Anything else?"

"The third Konoha team, designation W-12, departed in a northwesterly direction, 1400 hours," Sai continued. "Nothing further."

Shisui nodded. "Hinata-chan?"

Hinata fumbled the mask, just barely snagging it before she dropped it. "H-hai!" she stuttered. "The K-Kagamaru d-docked today at f-fifteen - 1450 hours," she corrected. "The c-command crew d-disembarked f-first and s-several u-unmarked crates were c-carried off w-with the r-rest and t-taken into the t-town. The H-Hijumaru is p-preparing for l-launch, but n-nothing s-suspicious was l-loaded yet."

"The crates were taken into one of the warehouses," said Gaara shortly. "Hinata was not followed."

"Copy that," said Shisui-sensei. "Get the written report done before you take off tomorrow, but get some rest tonight."

"Hai," said Sai, and Hinata echoed him.

"Good work, kids," Shisui-sensei said cheerfully. "There's another team rolling through tonight, you know the drill." He tapped a finger against his temple. "And keep your afternoon open tomorrow - we'll need to cobble together the op but we'll probably hit the warehouse then."

"Hai," Sai repeated.

Two makeshift wooden doors and a dusty corridor led them into the common room they shared with the rest of the pack. Hinata slid into the warm glow of electric lanterns behind Sai, brushing the crusted salt off her cloak and letting the door close behind her and Gaara.

"Hinata-chan!" Naruto greeted enthusiastically. "Gaara! We have fish!" He waved his plate in the air, and something white and flat went flying.

Only Sakura's reflexes, snapping up with her chopsticks to catch it, saved his fish. "Watch it, baka!" she snapped, slapping it back down on his plate. "Hinata, I'll get you some before this idiot knocks it all over."

Perched on the counter over her shoulder, Sasuke rolled his eyes discreetly. "What happened to you?" he asked between bites of rice. "Did you roll in a salt flat or something?"

"We were unfortunately forced to submerge in sewer water in order to return," Sai said blandly. "So we bathed in seawater to rid ourselves of the smell."

Hinata bit back a smile as Naruto burst into raucous laughter. "Sai!" he crowed, as the older boy brushed the white crystals from his cloak carefully. "You didn't!"

Gaara scowled. "Did," he grumbled, but his resentment had lost its edge.

"Well," Temari said wryly, appearing in the opposite doorway. "We'll never run out of salt." Gaara's posture straightened, angling attentively towards her, and she smiled at him fondly. Hinata watched wistfully. "Go on, get some food," the older girl urged. "Otherwise Naruto will eat it all again."

"I'm hungry!" Naruto made a face as Hinata accepted a plate from Sakura.

"Last night you ate Haku's share except a bowl of rice!" Temari scolded, reaching out to slap the back of his head.

"He said I could have it!"

"Yeah, and then he had a ration bar after dinner," she shot back.

Naruto faltered. "He did?" he asked in a small voice.

"Yes. He did," said Neji-nii-san coldly, sliding out of the same doorway to the sleeping dorms and levering Naruto with a disapproving stare. "Haku-san is both older and taller than you. It follows that he needs as much if not more food than you."

Hinata observed a rare moment in which Naruto seemed completely at a loss for words. She bit her lip and looked down at her own plate. She didn't need as much as Haku or Naruto, and she didn't mind eating the ration bars even if they were tough and tasteless. Should she offer him some of her food?

" - can't get as much fresh food," Temari was saying, "so we have to share what we do have."

Hinata opened her mouth, but the words caught in her throat. Frustrated, she closed her mouth again, staring down at her rice. What was wrong with her? It was just Naruto-kun, and she'd lived with him for nearly three years and known him even longer that that. She knew the favorite foods and birthdays and best jutsu of everyone in this room, but even around her friends, her pack, her throat constricted and wouldn't let the words out. She tried again. "A-ano..." It came out as a whisper. "Y-you - "

"That's it!" Naruto burst out. "I just have to find us more food and then we can eat as much as we want!"

"Naruto," Sakura said, adopting a lecturing tone as she twirled her chopsticks in one hand. "Shisui-sensei already told us we have to avoid the civilians as much as possible, and buying a lot of food will make people suspicious." Naruto's face fell again, screwing up in consternation and disappointment.

Hinata could fix it. She could give him the food he wanted and even needed more than she did. She just had to get the words out, and Naruto's bright smile would chase the misery off his face. Hinata swallowed. Across the room, Neji-nii-san narrowed his eyes at her and shook his head, just the tiniest movement. Humiliated, Hinata snapped her mouth shut again and stared at her feet. Neji-nii-san didn't approve; of course he didn't.

Her cousin had a preternatural ability to know what she was thinking, and he would no doubt lecture her, in that stiff, formal manner of his, that the heiress of the noble Hyuuga Clan should not be giving her dinner away to a lowborn nobody. Because Hinata was not her own person; she belonged to the Hyuuga, and to give in to her desire to be selfless was selfish in itself.

Sakura had been watching their exchange with her mouth twisted into a frown. Hinata knew she did not like Neji-nii-san. Despite the other girl's lack of a shinobi bloodline, Sakura was just as observant as Hinata, and caught each and every one of their silent conversations. Hinata wished she could tell her that Neji-nii-san was just looking out for her best interests, but this too she knew her cousin would protest, barbed and deferential and defensive all at once. It was a Clan matter, after all, and outsiders should not interfere with or even be privy to their interactions.

Behind her, Sasuke regarded Hinata briefly with hooded eyes before flickering to Neji-nii-san, but he merely turned back to his food with the faintest hint of a scowl. The Uchiha Clan raised its children almost as carefully as the Hyuuga and with many of the same rules.

Hinata ate mechanically, standing halfway behind Sai like a coward the entire time, and willed her hands to stop shaking.

Hinata woke before dawn, as she always did, and stared up at the bottom of Sai's bunk. Her dream, with its vague warnings and worries, slipped away, leaving behind a flash of a battle not yet fought and the stirrings of discomfort, fear, and a sense of urgency that drove her out of her bunk and into the small open room the pack used for sparring. She sank into her kata, letting the familiar movements soothe her troubled mind. Absently, she reached into her sleeves for the pair of hiogi battle-fans San had carved for her from the great antlers of a moose and added them to her kata, snapping them open with a flick of her wrist.

Neji-nii-san did not so much like her use of the hiogi in their family's traditional taijutsu, but Hinata had argued that it served to disguise the style - furthermore, the extra balance the beautifully crafted fans lent her had even let her take and keep the offensive in a spar between the two before it had ended as it always did, and Neji-nii-san had grudgingly accepted their utility in combat.

Hinata twirled, bringing the splayed blades of one up to block an imaginary blow, and with a deft flip of her hand, hurled the other at the wooden target board opposite the door. It flared gracefully before embedding itself into the wood. She stared at it, chest heaving as she stopped, frozen with her hand still outstretched.

"I recommend that you don't actually stop in the middle of battle," said Haku lightly from behind her, and she jumped and clutched her remaining fan over her heart. He smiled apologetically. "Sorry," he said.

"I-it was n-not y-you," Hinata said quickly, flicking her fan shut and tucking it back up her sleeve. She felt her cheeks flushing at her blunder, and she was desperately, pathetically glad Neji was not there. "I-I wasn't p-paying enough a-attention."

"It was a good throw." He padded over to the target on light feet and inspected her hiogi briefly before pulling it free with deceptive ease. He held it out to her, and she took it carefully and slid it back into its holster. "I don't have much experience with fans," Haku mused, "but I could give your pointers, if you like."

Hinata hesitated and bit her lip. "A-aren't you t-tired, H-Haku-san? Y-you were o-on w-watch the w-whole n-night."

The cloak slipped off Haku's shoulder as he stepped back. He tugged it back up absently and wrapped it across his chest more securely. "Aren't you?" he deflected mildly. "You and your team have been out constantly, and you didn't sleep long."

Hinata tipped her head away almost involuntarily. "I c-couldn't," she murmured, sliding her fan back into her hands and turning its folded form over and over.

Haku watched her sympathetically. "Lately I feel restless as well," he admitted quietly, eyes not quite focused on her face. "My purpose is to serve Zabuza-san and be at his side, yet - " he hesitated for a long moment, " - I am here, on the other side of the sea," he finished, just a hint of bitterness in his voice. "Useless."

"Y-you're not u-useless," Hinata insisted, glancing up at his wooden expression. "Y-you're o-one of the s-strongest of u-us, and I-I'm sure Z-Zabuza-sensei k-knows that."

"If he thought that," Haku said stiffly, "he would have brought me with him."

"Y-you have h-heard the s-stories the t-teams bring b-back f-from the f-front l-lines," Hinata said quietly. "M-maybe h-he's just t-trying to p-protect you."

"I was Anbu," Haku said coldly. "Hunter-nin. I protect Zabuza-san. If he needs to protect me, I am worse than useless to him. He may as well have left me in the trash where he found me." He glanced sideways, as if surprised to see the worried frown hovering at the edges of Hinata's face. "I apologize," he said lightly, and the harsh planes of his face melted back into something softer. "It wasn't my intention to burden you with my pointless musings. Perhaps I should sleep after all. I hear we are planning a raid tomorrow."

"The K-Kagamaru," agreed Hinata. "T-the crew c-cleared the s-ship for i-inspection but m-most l-likely will t-take back a w-weapons s-shipment to d-deliver to K-Kumo. S-Sensei wants to s-steal them b-before they l-leave."

Haku hummed. "It's distressing that merchants would smuggle weapons to Kumo - the very village that would trample their country beneath their troops' feet on their way to Konoha," he noted distantly.

"G-greed," Hinata murmured, splaying open her fan one rib at a time.

"Greed," Haku echoed, and left her to her katas.

When Hinata left the training room, she passed Gaara and Temari on their way in. The first didn't bother acknowledging her, while the latter sent her a cheery wave. "Hey, Hinata! Good session?" The older girl reached out a hand to ruffle her hair, the same way she did Gaara and all the younger kids, and Hinata's instincts fought between flinching and wishing she'd do it longer.

"A-aa," she managed to get out, keeping a wary eye on her teammate, who was suddenly watching her intently with hooded eyes. "I-I just p-practiced with my f-fans for a b-bit."

Temari sighed wistfully, hand going up instinctively to the massive weapon slung across her back. "I wish we had the space for me to work with mine," she said wryly. "I miss San's forest."

Hinata nodded agreement. The training room was too small and too poorly shielded by seals to use anything particularly destructive or chakra-intensive - and there was only the one, so training sessions were limited to an hour each to accommodate solo, pair, and team sessions. "I-I will l-leave you t-to it," she said politely, and sidled back to the kitchen area.

Sasuke was already there, banging around with bad grace. While Team Suzaku could all cook reasonably well, Sasuke and Hinata were nominally the ones on their respective teams who took charge of food preparation - Sasuke likely from sheer self-preservation in the face of Sakura's persistent over- and under-cooking and the sheer disaster that was Naruto's, though Hinata felt guilty just thinking something that unkind. Hinata had learned cooking from Temari and rather enjoyed it, compared to Gaara's general distaste for menial work. In Hinata, the Hyuuga had inadvertently bred the perfect Branch Hyuuga wife instead of the Main Family leader they had intended.

"D-do you n-need any h-help?" she offered as he thumped a large crate of tofu onto the counter and sent the water sloshing out onto the counter.

He glanced up. "Yeah. Can you julienne the carrots? I wanna make sukiyaki for lunch." He grimaced. "Sai's got breakfast duties."

Hinata bit back a wince. "H-he's not t-that b-bad," she defended loyally. She picked through the refrigerator for the carrots and took a knife from the rack.

"Sai cooks like we're in the field, with field rations, all the time," Sasuke said bluntly. "And he doesn't know how to salt things." It was true: Sai tended to favor aggressively simple, bland meals. He shuffled through the boxes scattered on the counter. "Where's the flour?"

Hinata glanced up from her knife sliding easily through the carrots. "I-it's in the s-same c-crate as the s-salt," she offered. She watched curiously as he hefted the flour. "W-what do you n-need f-flour for?"

He looked down at the bag in his hands and back up at her. "Udon," he said, in the manner used to state something obvious. "For the sukiyaki. We're out of dry noodles."

Hinata wondered if her father would also consider Sasuke the ideal Branch Hyuuga wife - his only flaw being, of course, his Uchiha blood.

She finished reducing the carrots to short, thin strips and reached for the cabbage next. With ten mouths to feed - sometimes more, depending on whether or not other Hana-ha teams had stopped by - a staggering mountain of food was required for each meal, when they could afford the fresh ingredients. Preparation ranged from an hour for the less culinarily-inclined to well over three for Haku or Sasuke when they felt restless.

She watched under her eyelashes as Sasuke dumped nearly the entire bag of flour into a giant vat, sending up plumes of white powder that he ducked, then liberal handfuls of salt without bothering to really measure it out. In retrospect, Sasuke's cooking style was not so different from Naruto's, yet somehow Sasuke's always turned out well. There wasn't really a spoon big enough for Sasuke's intended purpose; instead, he used a baseball bat to stir in the water. Hinata suspected he would have used Temari's battle-fan if he thought he could get away with it.

Sai wandered into - no, arrived, because wandered implied Sai ever did anything without explicit purpose - the kitchen as Hinata was shaving slices off a massive round of beef and Sasuke was rolling out a portion of his udon dough. He blinked owlishly at the piles of vegetable scraps and light dusting of flour coating every flat surface.

"G-good morning," said Hinata a little guiltily. Sai opened his mouth to respond.

"This isn't breakfast. It's lunch," Sasuke said abruptly, hovering over his half-formed noodles defensively.

Sai closed his mouth. "Noted," he said, faintly bemused, and turned, unsurprisingly, for the rice. Sasuke watched him with the faint shadow of a scowl but his dough dragged his attention back.

Sai's arrival signalled that of the rest of the pack, which trickled in little by little to perch in inobtrusive corners and watch the chaos unfold. Sakura was first, scooting on top of the far table with her legs swinging free to untangle a snarl of ninja wire. Haku drifted in next with a bundle of cloth, a needle, and some thread. Temari and Gaara followed, and the air of menace Hinata's teammate usually wore like his cloak was muted.

"Looks good, Sasuke," said Temari, leaning over the mound of uncooked noodles in the center of the counter.

Sasuke sort of grunted and eyed her warily, but the effect was somewhat diminished by the white dusting in his unruly hair. "Almost done," he said.

"You might even beat Sai," Temari said playfully, seemingly oblivious to the way Gaara peered at the other boy suspiciously.

"This is not a competition," Sai frowned.

Sasuke snorted.

"I know," Temari said fondly, and nudged Gaara over to the tables.

"Masks up." Hinata jumped a little as Neji-nii-san strode in briskly, Byakugan activated under his bone-mask. "We have company. Two teams."

Temari pulled hers down from the top of her head and Hinata yanked hers up from where it hung by the straps around her neck. She dropped her knife belatedly and lunged for her cloak, discarded near the door.

"What the hell," Sasuke grumbled, leaving white fingerprints on his cloak and shoving his mask on his face and a bandana over his hair. "Sakura, go tell the idiot before he stumbles in here and gives himself away."

"Way ahead of you." Sakura vanished out the door in a swirl of her cloak, neatly sidestepping Neji-nii-san as he moved deeper into the room.

Hinata stacked her cut vegetables into little piles in one crate, the meat in another, and stuffed the entire thing in the refrigerator case. Sasuke did the same with his noodles with a disgruntled set to his shoulders. Gaara picked up a cloth and began wiping the flour off the furniture with an air of tolerance.

"Will they be joining us for breakfast?" asked Sai, frowning at the vat of miso soup bubbling on the portable stove.

"Evidently," said Neji-nii-san with the shadow of a scowl.

"Where's Shisui?" Sasuke demanded, futilely brushing at his cloak.

"Shisui-sensei," Neji-nii-san said pointedly, to which Sasuke rolled his eyes discreetly, "is currently debriefing the squad leaders. I expect they will be finished shortly."

"What's the news?" asked Temari, and it would have been casual had everyone in the room not discreetly turned towards Neji-nii-san or stilled just a little to hear him better.

"Nothing from Itachi-sensei or Zabuza-sensei," he reported, and Sasuke and Haku sighed silently, almost in unison. "One of the teams briefly ran into Hatake-taichou during a front-line skirmish when he extracted them from an ambush, but he moved on quickly."

"A-are the t-teams i-injured?" Hinata asked timidly.

Her cousin glanced at her dismissively. "One shinobi has six broken bones in his left hand and arm, two have acute symptoms consistent with near-drowning, another is missing an ear and has recent extensive scarring on her right side torso." Hinata stifled a gasp and Temari's eyes were grim beneath her mask. "The other team is relatively fresh and has only superficial wounds and light chakra exhaustion."

"How long are they staying?" asked Temari quietly.

Neji-nii-san shook his head. "Not long for the uninjured team; they're mustering out to Kiri. The injured team might stay longer to recuperate. They will likely receive an assignment to a support position similar to ours."

"Yeah, the kids and the cripples," muttered Sasuke, and Hinata's eyes widened at his caustic tone.

"Sasuke!" Temari admonished sharply, narrowing her eyes at him from across the room.

"You mean 'Shi' while we have company ," he retorted, but ducked his head nonetheless.

"I'm here!" announced Naruto breathlessly, skidding into the kitchen with his mask haphazardly perched on his face. "What'd I miss, besides Sasuke being an absolute bastard again?"

" Shi is not a bastard, watch your mouth, Roku ," warned Temari, crossing her arms across her chest.

Naruto waved irreverently. "Oh my gods, is Sai - sorry, is Hachi cooking?" he demanded, flopping down theatrically across Temari and Gaara's laps. "Temari-nee, why ?" Hinata stifled a giggle. Gaara reached out hesitantly as if to run his fingers over the other's mask but pulled back his hand abruptly.

"How do you remember one codename but not the other?" muttered Sasuke derisively, and Naruto stuck his tongue out.

"I can cook," said Sai, turning from his pot of soup and looking mildly insulted.

"You cook like you would rather be doing anything but cooking," Sakura interjected, wandering in to sit between her teammates.

"I make efficient meals," Sai corrected, and Team Byakko groaned in unison.

"Everyone takes turns cooking," Temari reminded them. "We have to suffer through your meals too, Roku."

"Too?" Sai frowned, narrowing his eyes at Temari.

"I cook great!" Naruto insisted. "I do like the exact same thing that Shi does!"

Around Hinata, the entire pack groaned or rolled their eyes this time.

"Then why does yours always taste like sand?" Sakura demanded.

"Don't ask me, Go-Go-chan, ask Shichi. He's the sand guy," protested Naruto.

"No," said Gaara.

"Fine," said Naruto. "It's Kyuu-chan. She's been sabotaging me."

Hinata jolted as everyone glanced at her curiously. She took a panicky breath even a she let her mind shift, recalibrate. Kyuu was cold and reserved but unafraid and warm with her packmates; a fighter, a teammate with loyalty only to her pack and her cause. Kyuu was everything Hinata wished she could be but was not. "Even if I did sabotage Roku's cooking it is not as though it could get any worse," Kyuu drawled.

A pause. "Man," said Roku gleefully. "That's still - "

"Creepy," said Shi under his breath.

" - awesome!" finished Roku.

"Jealous?" murmured Kyuu sardonically, leaning back against the counter and raising her eyebrow at Shi. He wrinkled his nose at her, torn between amused and disdainful.

"It's a useful skill to have," said Ichi, methodically folding away his mending.

Roku jabbed an accusatory finger at him, which he regarded serenely. "You're just sayin' that because you're good at it too!"

"Seriously," added Go. "You can make people think you're a girl ."

Across the room, Ni was watching Kyuu with narrowed eyes, but she tilted her chin up and stared back. She wasn't afraid of him. He broke eye contact first. "They're coming," he announced to the room at large.

"The food is nearly done," said Hachi, poking at his pots.

"I hate eating with the mask," Roku grumbled.

Rei-nee rapped Roku's head gently with her knuckles. "Get off me and Shichi," she said. "Try to pretend like you're an actual shinobi."

Kyuu could hear the sulk in his voice. "I am an actual shinobi," he complained, but hauled himself upright.

"Kyuu," said Hachi. He jerked his chin at the pot of rice steaming gently on the counter, his own hands full with the soup, and she slipped behind him to get it as he carried his burden to the tables.

"Okay, everyone," called Juu. Kyuu set the rice down next to the miso soup and turned to the doorway. Most of his face was swathed in bandages in the style Kiri nin preferred. The pack swivelled curiously towards him and the cluster of shinobi clustered behind him. "We have company," he announced. "They'll be staying in the south wing, so I don't expect you to have much contact outside of meals and guard shifts."

He gestured, and a man with a heavily plastered arm in a sling stepped forward, followed by another man and two women, one with bloodstained bandages wrapped over her head. All four wore battered flak jackets, and their clothes were stained and torn to reveal blood or bandages or both beneath. "This is Chuunin Morita and his team - Jin, Akiko, and Nobu. They're walking wounded, so Rei - keep them off the guard roster for now."

"Hai," said Rei-nee, eyeing the newcomers with interest.

Juu waved at the other team hanging back in the doorway. "That's Chuunin Akimoto and his team: Yagami, Nakamura, and Hidaka. They're here for two days." He turned slightly to address the newcomers. "Teams, meet Rei, Ichi, Ni, Shi, Go, Roku, Hachi, and Kyuu. Ranks classified."

"You're shitting me, sir," Nobu barked out a half-laugh. "Masks and codenamed numbers zero through ten? I thought 'Juu' sounded fishy."

"What happened to San?" asked Nakamura curiously. "Why don't you have a Number Three?"

Juu paused. "We had a San, but she is no longer with us," he said, and Kyuu watched with amusement at the deliberate misleading as the teams exchanged wary glances. "Teams Suzaku, Byakko, and Genbu are all tagged for infiltration work, so masks and codenames are necessary." He shrugged. "Orders," he said carelessly. "You know how it is."

One-eared Akiko scoffed. "But it's okay for them to know our names?"

Juu rolled his one visible eye. "No offense, but you're not that important. Kiri's interrogators wouldn't care about you."

Interestingly, Akiko seemed to relax at that. She nodded at Morita, and on some unspoken signal, the team moved as a unit to one of the unoccupied sides of the table as the pack crammed in together on one long side. The other team, however, exchanged glances and stayed hovering in the doorway. Juu paused halfway from retrieving a stack of bowls from one of the crates on the counter. "Problem?" he asked lightly.

"Yeah, I got a problem," growled Akimoto belligerently. "You jerking us around right now. You expect us to believe that these midgets - " he gestured abruptly at the pack. " - are undercover agents?"

Kyuu shifted slightly in her seat, attention now firmly on the team standing tense in the doorway.

"Well," Juu said. "Yes."

"Bullshit," Akimoto spat. "They're green as the grass. I bet they'd be in the Academy still. That one's barely tall enough to walk!" He jabbed a finger at Shichi.

Shichi's hooded eyes turned murderous in a split second, and his control slipped just enough to let loose a hint of killing intent. Kyuu stiffened, but just as fast he wrestled it back under control.

"Shichi can take care of himself," said Juu. "Is your team going to eat?"

"Do any of them have field experience?" Akimoto demanded.

Juu set down the stack of bowls decisively. "Okay," he said, swivelling to face the other team. "Stop." He advanced on Akimoto, stopping just in front of him. His slight frame was dwarfed by that of the much larger man, but he stared him down evenly. "I am their commanding officer, and right now, yours. Sit down. Eat your breakfast. My teams and their operations have nothing to do with you."

Akimoto sneered down at him. "It does if it'll get us killed acting on intel they get. And you, sir ," he spat derisively, "have to earn my respect if you want to command me or my team."

The killing intent hit Kyuu like a stone wall, and flickers of the fear and death from half-remembered dreams came roaring back and knocked the breath from her lungs. Juu watched Akimoto calmly as the bigger man staggered, one knee hitting the ground under the brunt of his sakki, and the blood drained from his face. Juu raised his gaze to the rest of Akimoto's team. Their eyes were wide in shock as they stood frozen behind their leader. Hidaka swallowed audibly.

"Sit," Juu invited, as friendly as he might if he were asking an old friend to dinner, and just as quickly as it manifested the killing intent vanished.

Cautiously, Akimoto's team edged around their gasping leader's hunched form, giving Juu a wide berth as they joined the wary audience at the table. Kyuu sat frozen, one eye on the Juu and the other on her team and the rest of the pack. Like her, Hachi and Shichi watched the confrontation, muscles tense and ready to move. Shi, Go, and Roku had their hands discreetly on their holsters. Team Suzaki ignored the spectacle and ate their rice. They were the only source of movement in the room.

Juu-returned his attention to Akimoto. Drops of sweat had beaded up on the older man's temple as he gritted his teeth. "Well," Juu-said to him pleasantly. "Are we done?"

Laboriously, with as much dignity as he could scrape together, Akimoto hauled himself upright and shot a poisonous glare at Juu. "Yeah," he grunted. He moved to shoulder his way past, but Juu sidestepped neatly back into his path and forced him to stop short.

"I said," he enunciated pleasantly. "Are we done, chuunin?"

Kyuu felt her heartbeats tick by as Akimoto glowered at the ground. "Yes, sir," he ground out, and only then did Juu let him pass. The table let out a collective breath. Roku reached for the soup instead of his kunai, and Kyuu felt herself relax minutely.

"Damn," muttered Nobu under his breath, eyeing Rei-nee as she popped the last bite of her rice in her mouth. "You all have balls of steel. Juu is terrifying when he's angry. I think I pissed myself a little."

Rei-nee exchanged a glance with Ichi. "He's not angry," she said, a slight frown in her voice.

"Perhaps annoyed at best," Ichi agreed. "I don't believe I've ever seen him truly mad - and certainly not today."

"Juu has little patience for posturing," added Ni in a low voice, spooning the miso soup over his rice. "However, he appreciates being taken lightly even less."

Nobu and his teammates shared an unspoken conversation in the creasing of their eyes and narrowing of their mouths and tiny nods or shakes of their heads. Kyuu tilted her head interestedly, and at her side Hachi watched quietly. Morita finally spoke up in a hushed murmur: "How strong is he, to be able to pull out sakki like that out of nowhere?"

Kyuu's eyes flickered to Hachi, who glanced at Rei-nee out of the corner of his eye before looking away again. Rei-nee hummed absently, reaching for the soup. "Don't know," she said. "I never met him in Konoha. Strong enough to hold a small command, even if it's on the outskirts of the war?"

"Was he Anbu? He's gotta be at least tokujou," said Jin.

"He wouldn't be Anbu if he's all the way out here," disagreed Akiko. As one, the team turned to scrutinize Juu, poking amicably at his rice next to a visibly tense Akimoto. "General or Command Corps, do you think?"

"Any information regarding any of our identities, including name and rank, are classified," Ni said stiffly.

"Keep your pants on," grunted Nobu, letting his bowl thump to the table with a little more force than necessary. "Idle talk, nothing more."

After breakfast, six hours of Moe on the streets of Kitakyushu. After that, two hours of Kyuu in the base at lunch. She had little time to be just Hinata, but honestly, she preferred it that way.

"All right, kids," said Shisui-sensei. He leaned against the main table in their briefing room, a relatively large room with a series of rickety wooden tables of varying sizes and little else. The pack perched, leaned, or stood in a rough semicircle around him, masks off but in easy reach. "This is your briefing. The room is shielded with privacy seals - no eyes, no ears, no chakra output. Let's get this done."

Beside where Hinata sat with both legs dangling off the side of a table, her teammate opened his hand and let the sand slither out, rolling it over and over his wrist absently.

Shisui-sensei folded his hands into a seal. In a surge of chakra, his genjutsu caught them all up to create a visualization of the barest structure of a warehouse near the Kumata Gauntlet - an empty suggestion of a building in blue lines. "This is the location of the operation," he began. "The Kagamaru docked yesterday afternoon, and as you know, they're repeat weapons smugglers - namely for outposts in Kaminari no Kuni. Intel gathered by Team Genbu suggests they have a shipment stored in this warehouse to the east of the Kumata Gauntlet while the rest of their goods are loaded and inspected. Unfortunately, due to the presence of several teams of both Konoha and unaffiliated shinobi in the South District, including at least one sensor-nin, we're unable to get direct eyes on the package itself. However, Sai was able to send some scouts in. Sai."

Sai stepped forward, stopping just short the illusionary warehouse. "My sumi rats were able to locate the package but not verify its contents," he reported. "There are eight civilian or genin-level guards stationed at the warehouse at night, rotating between stationary and patrolling. Additionally, I can confirm floorplans for the warehouse." He traced their outlines in the air as he spoke, and Shisui-sensei's genjutsu added more lines to accommodate his descriptions. "Large bay doors on the east wall. Seven regular doors: three each on the north and south walls, one on the west wall here. Dividing wall here. Stairs here and here, along the north-south walls. Offices upstairs here, here, here, and here. Windows half a meter below the ceiling along all walls. Bathroom and kitchens, industrial hoses and drains." His finger sketched rough boxes in the largest ground floor room. "There are metal racks in most of the warehouse space and pallets in between rows. The package is here." He pointed at the center of the warehouse.

"Team Byakko, you guys are the distraction," said Shisui-sensei, and a white circle pulsed on the north side of the warehouse. "I don't care what you do, just draw the guards away from the south wall."

"Yes!" Naruto whispered gleefully.

Shisui-sensei paused and frowned. "Nothing too loud or destructive," he warned. "The last thing we need is more attention." He eyed the three suspiciously, but besides the grin Naruto was obviously swallowing down, they blinked back at him innocently. "Gods help us," he muttered under his breath. He jabbed a finger at the team. "No maiming, no killing, and no property damage, " he ordered. "Team Suzaku has point. Locate the package and retrieve the contents. If possible, replace with something of similar weight. Minimal chakra use." A red dot appeared on the south side.

"Hai," acknowledged Temari, exchanging a glance with Haku and Neji-nii-san.

"Team Genbu, secure the perimeter. No civilian interruptions, and report immediately if any shinobi get curious." He regarded the three teams evenly, and in front of him, the genjutsu expanded to include the outlines of surrounding buildings and the edge of the Kumata. "This is a covert operation, but if things go south, I'm your backup and extraction." He pointed at one of the buildings adjacent to the warehouse. "I'll be on the roof here, but remember that if you're discovered, the operation is blown whether or not you need me to pull you out. Everyone rabbits and regroups at the rendezvous. Questions?"

Hinata hesitantly shook her head, mirroring Sai. Neji-nii-san studied the map thoughtfully before Shisui-sensei cut the flow of chakra and dispelled the genjutsu. "You have enough experience that I trust you'll handle the finer details yourself," said Shisui-sensei, and Hinata shivered at the implications. "Team leaders, report your tactical plans at 1800 hours. Last run-through is at 1900; we leave at 2000 hours."

The teams all had different pre-mission rituals. Team Genbu's started with a nap. When Hinata blinked awake after a solid two hours of unconsciousness, she made out Sai already up, crosslegged and hunched over a scroll. She climbed out of her bunk and shuffled her way over. He'd drawn out a map, like Shisui-sensei's genjutsu but in two dimensions with his thick black ink. He looked up as she approached before returning his attention to the map. "There are far too many avenues of entrance to secure," he said absently, frowning. "Even if each of us takes a corner and one covers two sides of the warehouse, even if we hold just a one-block radius, there is a good chance that the adjacent buildings will yield many potential witnesses from their own doors - especially if Team Byakko is permitted to design their own distraction."

Team Byakko was known neither for their subtlety nor self-restraint. "W-we could f-focus on the s-side T-Team S-Suzaku is e-entering o-on," Hinata suggested. "T-Team B-Byakko can p-prevent anyone e-entering f-from the n-north w-wall."

"We have no other reasonable option," Sai agreed, resigned. "Do you have any thoughts on this, Gaara?"

Hinata looked up to where their third teammate perched on his top bunk, staring down at the map with narrowed eyes. "No," he snapped, without shifting his gaze. Sai waited patiently. "Yes," he amended after a pause. "We can smell them approaching upwind."

"Seabreeze," Sai muttered. "Wind blows east to west. Good point." He tapped the southwest corner of the warehouse. "This is the most crucial position," he said. "Lines of sight along the south and west sides of the warehouse. Smells from the east. Gaara, you take this position; ground level. There's a stack of old crates and a boarded up stoop you can use for cover." Gaara made no indication he'd heard the instructions, but that was normal. He wouldn't be the one to let the team down.

"I'll be on the northeast corner," Sai continued, "where I will have sightlines along the north and east sides. Hinata, you will be here." He tapped the building to the southeast of the warehouse. "On the roof of this building. Sentry position."

Of the three positions, Hinata's was the safest - it was high above street level, where any action was likely to take place. But she was not the one who should stationed there. "I - " Hinata had to stop for a shuddering breath. "I-I-I - I think I-I should b-be on the n-northeast c-corner," she squeaked, and fought the urge to duck her head.

"Oh?" said Sai.

He sounded interested rather than dismissive, so Hinata took a fortifying breath and plunged on. "Y-you n-need the v-vantage p-point. Y-you are the p-point of c-contact between u-us and the o-other t-teams and S-Sensei. You n-need to be a-able to s-see b-both of us."

Sai scrutinized the map silently. Hinata instinctively twisted her hands together. He didn't agree; it was a bad idea. Of course it was, Neji-nii-san said she needed to think like a shinobi instead of a scared little girl like she always did and she was trying to be brave but she was still wrong. She wished she could take it back -

"A logical point," said Sai, jarring her out of her thoughts. "You will have the northeast corner, in that case. Redirect any comers and incapacitate where necessary." Hinata took a shaky breath as Sai rolled the scroll back up. "I will report to Shisui-sensei," he said. "You and Gaara can continue preparing for the mission."

The wind rushed in from the sea, tugging Kyuu's hair and battering the shaded wraparound glasses she wore, the kind that Ni favored to hide his eyes. The night was dark and cold and shrouded in seafog that hung in the air and dampened her hearing. It did not obscure her Byakugan's sight, but very little could hide from her eyes when she chose.

She leaned against a coiling door that was rough and patchy with rust, swathed in the shadows lent by the stoop. The warehouses yawned out before her in lines and shapes, leeched of color by the darkness. Hachi perched three stories up, motionless on the corner of the building, but she knew his creatures flitted and scuttled in the alleys, through the warehouses themselves, and deep below their feet, crawled along the walls of the sewer tunnels. Opposite her, though she did not look through the walls of the target warehouse, Shichi sat on a stack of crates, chin propped in one hand and hood pulled low over his half-lidded eyes. Like Kyuu and Hachi, he had been sitting there for almost two hours.

The guards had finished their walkaround, their first of the night, and retreated back into an office for a round of cards. Full dark meant the alleyways were deserted save the occasional townsperson still making their way home, the neighboring warehouse that shipped soy sauce and miso and tofu was closed up and still, and the drug- and people-traffickers haunted the Kumata. Still - minimal civilian witnesses. Kyuu breathed in, craned her head to check the streets behind her, then turned back to face front. The movements of the people on distant streets behind her appeared to her like ants, scuttling on their way on trajectories yet unknown to even her, but around the target there were none. She signalled to Hachi with just a twitch of her fingers: all clear.

Hachi's head dipped just a little in response. One of his birds swerved abruptly midair and swooped down on Team Byakko, sequestered in the mouth of narrow alley a few blocks down from Kyuu's position.

Roku shoved Go, who slapped him back and nudged Shi, who glowered at her in turn. Shi sauntered out of the alley, cool as can be, and set a stack of wooden pallets alight with a flick of his fingers - a match, not a katon. He shoved the used match back in his shuriken pouch and strode away. Behind him, the flames picked up, licking merrily at the splintering wood. Kyuu sidled along her wall as their light pushed her shadows back. She shook her head. Juu would have their heads, no property damage .

"Hey!" Roku barreled out of the alley next and pounded his fist on the nearest door of the target warehouse. "Hey, there's a fire! Hey!"

At first, nothing happened. The four figures stayed hunched around their cards upstairs, silhouetted against the orange glow of the window. After a moment, their heads started to turn, annoyance in their postures. Finally, one slammed his cards down and clumped over to the window to peer out. Immediately he whirled, shouting, and the three at the table scrambled to get up. They rattled noisily down the metal stairs.

Outside, the flames licked hungrily at the outside of the building. Roku beat ineffectually on the warehouse door until it was thrown open and the men poured out.

One of them immediately threw Roku up against the wall, another started shoving the flaming pallets onto the ground. The others crashed back inside, charging back undoubtedly towards the kitchens for the hoses. "The hell did you do, you little brat?" demanded the man holding Roku, giving him a little shake.

All eight guards accounted for. Kyuu signalled Hachi again, and this time he would signal Rei-nee's team.

Meanwhile, Go flew out of the alley and onto the man holding Roku, beating on him with feeble fists. The man turned, dropping Roku. One of the men dragging a hose out of the building dropped it and rushed to pull her off.

"Get off him!" Go shrieked, ducking before the other man could grab her.

"Yeah!" added Roku, glaring at the man above the bandana wrapped around the lower half of his face and brushing his clothes off indignantly. "Next time you can just burn, old man!"

Behind Kyuu, a man turned into her alley. "The hell is all that?" he muttered, craning his head in the direction of the shouting and glow of the flames. Kyuu had seen the man briefly when he'd wandered down off the Kumata five blocks back, but only now was he too close to the operation.

' One civilian ,' she signed to Hachi, moving only her hands. ' Moving to neutralize .'

She didn't need to move to track his movements. He coughed, shuffling right past Kyuu without seeing her. She peeled away from the wall, shadowing the man's footsteps. He was much taller than her, his shoulders rounded with hard work and jacket worn but sturdy. She wrinkled her nose. Her sense of smell was far weaker than Shichi's or Roku's, but one would have to be scent-blind to miss the waves of alcohol emanating from his breath. It was a minor miracle the man had not yet been mugged, wandering through a place like this drunk.

Kyuu thought he must be overdue.

Just before he reached the corner, Kyuu rose up onto the balls of her feet and slammed her fist into the back of his head. He went down like a sack of sand. She took him by the wrist and dragged the limp body backwards, depositing him back around the corner. After a moment's hesitation, she patted down his jacket and pants until she found the wallet in his back pocket. She pulled out the stack of folded ryou and tossed the empty wallet back on his chest. She left him there and slipped back to her post.

Atop his roof, Hachi had angled towards her almost imperceptibly. ' Status? ' he signed.

' Clear, ' she signed, and he turned away again.

Go and Roku's argument had escalated into a yelling match with the warehouse men that dragged in the other men one at a time as the fire sputtered out under the blast of the hose. She tuned it out. It was not important to the mission, and Go and Roku had immediate backup in Shi if they needed it.

Instead she watched her alleys, and she watched Hachi out of the corner of her eye. She caught the flash of his hands - to Shichi, not to her: 'negative' and ' two ' and ' neutralize ' and ' caution ' and ' backup? ' Kyuu stiffened, bringing up her hands in the seal that would summon her through-sight, but Hachi snapped a sign in her direction. Hold. She waited, still tense, because her time in San's forest had taught her that all good hunters were patient and her time on the run with Neko-sensei had taught her that all bad prey was impatient.

Instead, she watched Go and Roku duck away from the warehouse men, now all but two grabbing for them like the townschildren chasing chickens. There was an art to looking clumsy while every movement was carefully calculated, but Roku had none of that. His clumsiness was in no way calculated. He tripped over a man's outstretched foot, pitching under another's grasping arms, and tumbled into a stack of crates that knocked into a third and sent him sprawling in the dirt. In contrast, Go was nimble and crafty, deftly whipping her ponytail away from the man that tried to grab it in one meaty fist and pushing off another's back to launch herself away from the tussle.

"Bleh! Can't catch me!" Roku crowed, hurling a handful of loose dirt at a man's eyes. The man yelped and stumbled backwards.

"Yeah, don't you mess with my friend, you giant jerk!" Go shrilled, backing away towards the alley.

"Ah, just let 'em go, Nakahiro, they're just a couple of dumb kids," called one of the men manning the hose.

" You're dumb, Nakahiro, I'm just a kid," Roku sang gleefully.

"Shut your damn mouth!" snarled Nakahiro and lunged. Roku dove away and landed in a crouch on all fours, then leapt away, cackling.

A sudden, small movement caught her eye; Shichi's hands flashed at her urgently. Four Konoha shinobi approaching from north-northwest. Withdraw immediately. In a blur of dark cloth, he vanished off the corner of his roof, leaving her alone in her doorway.

Hinata's panic choked her, freezing Kyuu's limbs and ripping the air from her lungs. Frantically, she clawed for Kyuu's calm focus.

A particularly strong gust of wind lashed the walls of the alley. With a whoosh and a crackle, the fire roared back alive, sparks catching on another pile of wood debris further down. The men and Go and Roku scattered with shouts.

The flames threw new light on Kyuu, and she shrank back. Withdraw? Roku and Go were still entangled with the warehouse guards, with the fires cutting them off from Shi and their best avenue of escape. Should she help? Hinata dithered, but Kyuu couldn't afford to, not with a Konoha team closing in. She turned away from Team Byakko and darted back towards the Kumata, vaulting neatly over the fence into the next lot. A dull roar rumbled through the air. Kyuu turned in time to see a plume of flame break the darkness of the night sky, and she huffed a dismayed gasp.

Her chakra-sense blared a warning and she had just enough time to suck in a frantic breath before a hand snagged her mid-flight and clamped around her throat. She gagged, one hand flying up instinctively to the shinobi's wrist as he slammed her backwards against a concrete wall. The back of her head cracked against the unforgiving wall and busts of white and black exploded across her vision. Desperately, she caught the shinobi's other hand with her own as he reached for her mask.

"Who are you?" the shinobi snapped, tufts of brown hair falling over his leaf hitai-ate. Though only a little taller than Juu, he lifted her off the ground easily.

Hinata kicked against the wall but couldn't find leverage. Kyuu's battle calm slipped further and further from her grasp as panic wracked black claws through her mind. The shinobi squeezed, and Hinata reached desperately for her chakra. "Who hired you?" the man demanded. "Who do you work for?"

" - ack," Hinata choked out.

Even as her vision blurred she could not miss the slight figure storming towards them. Sand swirled at his side, agitated as a swarm of hornets. She let go of the man's hand around her throat to desperately sign ' no sand' at Gaara because the second their identities were discovered they would have to run again, and she did not want to run anymore. The sand dropped to the ground all at once with a hiss, but pure malice rose in its place, covering him like a second cloak.

The man loosened his grip slightly and turned towards the new threat, and that was enough for Hinata to wrest back both Kyuu and control of her chakra. She blasted raw chakra from the tenketsu in her palm and sent the shinobi flying backwards. She stumbled, landing in a crouch next to Shichi, and wheezed for air, glaring at the shinobi as he rolled to his feet. "I am one of us, and we are pack," rasped Kyuu defiantly. Hachi's lithe form alighted on the roof behind the shinobi, blade in hand. "And nobody owns us."

The shinobi glanced between her and Shichi's masks warily, flitting over their furred cloaks and the snarling wolf's visage San had painstakingly carved. Kyuu drew her battle-fans and shifted her feet. Shichi crouched low, dripping sakki, and prowled forward on light feet with bloodlust in his eyes. The shinobi tensed, a kunai appearing in each hand.

Kyuu feinted, snapping out a hiogi to its full width, and caught one of the shinobi's kunai in between the slats of the other when he jabbed at her. Shichi lurched forward, fingers curled in imitation of the claws he normally wielded, and lashed out at the shinobi's legs.

"Shit!" spat the shinobi leaping backwards. Kyuu flicked her wrist sharply and wrenched the kunai from one hand. He sent the other spinning at Shichi, but silent Hachi who could hide even his intent flashed behind the shinobi in a shunshin and struck a single hard blow to the back of his head with the hilt of his tanto, narrowly dodging the reflexive strike. The shinobi hit the ground with a thud and Shichi stopped short with a nearly-silent snarl.

Kyuu glared at the surrounding alleyways, chest heaving and ears straining for signs of witnesses or ambushers. A flickering orange glow lit the sky back in the direction they'd come from. The warehouse was well and truly on fire now.

"We leave," said Hachi, looking down briefly at the crumpled Konoha nin. "Now."

Droplets of sweat beaded up on Shisui-sensei's face as he strained to hold his handful of green chakra to Hinata's neck. His eye was no more than ten centimeters from hers, and so she could see the sharp anger in it quite well.

Hinata was quite familiar with the Hyuuga displeasure - her father's cool disapproval and Neji-nii-san's icy hatred, which smoldered long and slow into a cold rage. She had heard too of the Uchiha wrath that ignited abruptly and burned fast, which she had seen hints of in Sasuke. Perhaps she believed Itachi-sensei and Shisui-sensei to be different, as they had never before demonstrated more than a mild annoyance.

But today, Shisui-sensei's famous Uchiha temper lit in a flash and sparked Hinata's urge to sit very still on her table to avoid drawing his ire. "I don't know what you were thinking," he said, biting each word off deliberately. "And I don't care. You defied orders. You revealed our presence to the shinobi who want to hunt us down. Your actions almost got your comrade killed tonight."

Behind him, separated from Shisui-sensei by a single table, Team Byakko stood stiffly in a row. Naruto watched Hinata, guilt in his wide, blue eyes. Sasuke glowered at the far wall, but his shoulders were hunched. Sakura worried at her lower lip with her teeth, eyes darting between Hinata and Shisui-sensei.

On one side, pressed against the wall, were Sai and Gaara - the former at parade rest, the latter slouched slightly and rolling a ball of compressed sand in his hands. On the other wall was Team Suzaku, so still they could have been sculptures. Each of them tracked Shisui-sensei with wary eyes.

The chakra in Shisui-sensei's hand coughed and sputtered out. He whirled away from Hinata so quickly she flinched from the sudden movement and slammed his hand onto the surface of the nearest table. It splintered with a loud crack. "Look at her!" he demanded, jabbing a finger back at Hinata. "If he squeezed longer, harder, just a centimeter to the right, she could have gotten a crushed larynx or a broken neck or brain damage. All the chakra and chakra control in the world can't fix brain damage!"

Her hand rose unconsciously to her bruised throat and the heat rushed to her face as the pack's eyes drew to her automatically, unwillingly. Only her wheezing breaths broke the silence. She had been the only one caught, shaken like a mouse in a cat's mouth and tossed aside like a woman battered by her husband, and she withered under their eyes. Neji-nii-san's narrowed at her balefully. She of all people should not have been snuck up upon and brutalized so easily.

"We - " Naruto began bravely, but Shisui-sensei glowered at him and he subsided.

"You burned down half that warehouse and brought a third of the Konoha teams in the entire city down on us," Shisui-sensei hissed. "You're lucky they were too interested in the warehouse to chase down a couple of kids. And you don't get to rely on luck on the battlefield."

"We got the weapons," said Naruto in a small voice. "Right?"

"Yes," said Shisui-sensei in a deceptively calm voice. "But when the Konoha shinobi don't find the weapons while searching the warehouse full of contraband , the crew of the Kagamaru will know it was stolen before the fire, and not by Konoha agents. Do you think they'll be back?" With a final glare at Team Byakko, Shisui-sensei turned back around to Hinata, who couldn't quite hold back a flinch, and willed the chakra back to his hand. "You're not just my students, now," he said, voice so low it rumbled in Hinata's ear as he leaned forward to press the chakra against her throat carefully. "You're shinobi. You follow orders, you complete the mission, and you definitely do not get your comrades injured or killed."

Hinata wrung her hands together anxiously. She knew it was Team Byakko's mistake that led to the Konoha shinobi investigating the warehouse, but she'd been the one who'd been noticed. Neji-nii-san had not said such things aloud in months, but he was right - she shouldn't be in the field. She was a liability.

"Team Byakko," Shisui-sensei barked, and Hinata flinched, jolted out of her thoughts. "On the ground. Pushups."

Sakura glanced at Sasuke, whose glare didn't lessen in intensity. Both dropped to the floor quietly.

"How many?" Naruto asked as he followed, though Temari shook her head at him - the tiniest movement.

"Until I tell you to stop," Shisui-sensei snapped, and the chakra in his hand wavered. He closed his eye briefly before glaring again at the bruising on Hinata's neck with intimidating intensity. "Or will you disobey that order too? Do them until you feel like dying and then keep going, because that's what will happen to your teammates the next time you pull something this stupid."

The cool wrap of Shisui-sensei's chakra gradually soothed the harsh burn of Hinata's breaths catching in her throat, and after half an hour marked by Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto's forms bobbing up and down rhythmically, Shisui-sensei stepped back and let the chakra flicker out at last. The glow of anger had dimmed from his eye as well, and Hinata breathed easier. "I can't fix everything now," he told her, scrutinizing the mass of purpling. "But I mitigated the worst of the damage."

"T-thank y-you," Hinata whispered.

He shook his head, mouth pressed together. "This shouldn't have happened," he muttered. He turned slightly to address the rest of the pack. "You are all suspended," he bit out. "What affects one of you affects all of you. Don't leave this room." He stalked out of the briefing room, and the door clicked decisively shut behind him.

Hinata stayed frozen on top of her table just as the rest of the pack save Team Byakko stood arrayed about the perimeter. Time marched on, and Hinata's heartbeat thundered in her ears. Nobody spoke.

Sakura's breath grew ragged first, arms trembling from the effort it took her to push herself off the floor. She was always first to stop running, first to be tagged out of sparring, first to exhaust her chakra. Sweat soaked through her hair and the back of her shirt, and her hair hung lank about her flushed face. Sakura faltered, her entire body shuddering with the effort to keep herself off the ground, and Hinata shivered in commiseration, rubbing her arms subconsciously. She was beginning to understand why this was a group punishment.

Hinata…

Hinata couldn't just watch Sakura struggle alone. Not when she'd caused this with her own weakness. She stepped forward, almost as if in a trance, and the focus of the rest of the pack snapped to her immediately. She wobbled, pulled her cloak off her shoulders almost absently and let it drop behind her.

"Hinata-sama," Neji-nii-san said reproachfully, breaking the silence for the first time in an eternity. Hinata wouldn't let herself be deterred, not from this.

She knelt in front of Sakura, and the other girl glanced up at her blearily. Silently, Hinata angled her hands on the ground at shoulder width, set her feet, and lowered herself in a pushup. Her throat throbbed in time with her pulse and she breathed deeply as she sank into the next.

"Follow my voice, Sakura," said Temari quietly, and Hinata opened her eyes in surprise. She hadn't realized she'd closed them. The older girl nodded at Hinata, once, and focused on Sakura as she herself maneuvered into the plank position beside her. "Down. Up. Breathe."

Sakura sucked in a sob, but her eyes were clearer now, fixed on Temari doing the pushups next to her. Sai dropped down next to Hinata and on her other side was Haku, then Gaara and even Neji-nii-san until the breathing of all her packmates grew choppy and uneven.

Hinata lost herself in a haze of pain and resolve.

Sakura hit the ground first, arms giving out beneath her, and she landed with a soft grunt. She lay still, panting, before struggling to push herself back up, her entire body shuddering with the effort. Then it was Sasuke, faltering halfway through pushing back up and hitting the ground with a muted thud.

"Get up, bastard," rasped Naruto. Sweat drenched his shirt and dripped to puddle beneath him. Gritting his teeth audibly, Sasuke shoved himself up.

Gaara snarled wordlessly, a brief blast of sakki battering at Hinata's nerves, but despite his well-known hatred of all things physical he did not get up or storm off.

Hinata dropped her head, closing her eyes against the black spots that danced across her vision. She knew if she tried to bend her arms again she would fall, and if she fell she did not know if she could get back up. Even as her muscles screamed and her vision blurred and her heartbeat measured the hours ticking by, even though the ache in her throat grew raw and sharp, and even though this was not Hinata's punishment, she would not allow herself to stop. She was pack and this was her pack and this was right.

"What the hell are you doing?" Someone grabbed Hinata around the middle with strong hands, and she flailed mindlessly, panic cutting through the veil around her mind as she was hauled upright. She exhaled in relief when she recognized Shisui-sensei's face, but her breathing stuttered again when she recognized the fury in his expression. "Sit down, don't move," he ordered her, lifting her easily onto a tabletop. "All of you, get up," he barked at the rest of the pack, and they scrambled to find their feet. Shisui-sensei turned back to Hinata. Healing chakra sparked to light in one hand as he leaned over her and he pressed it against her throat carefully. "I just got through telling you how you almost died, why would immediate physical exertion ever sound like a good idea?" he snapped. "I'm not a medic-nin. If anything more serious develops, I can't fix it."

He glared over his shoulder at the rest of the pack staggering upright. Temari's cheeks were flushed, and sweat plastered her bangs to her forehead. Neji-nii-san's hair stood up in odd spikes, and Sai swayed on his feet. Naruto and Sasuke trembled from the effort just to stand still, and Sakura's eyes were vacant. "Whose idea was this?" he demanded.

Temari raised her chin defiantly, and Shisui-sensei narrowed his eye at her. "Did you even think - "

"I-it was m-mine," Hinata interrupted in a hoarse croak, and Shisui-sensei whipped back around. "Gods above, Hinata-chan," he grumbled. "Everyone else, get out. What are you trying to prove, Hinata-chan?" he asked, as if to himself as the others shuffled out. His chakra soothed the worst of the throb in her throat.

"I-I'm n-not," Hinata said meekly, watching the cords on his neck stand out. She ducked her head guiltily. Shisui-sensei had already spent so much chakra and effort on healing her earlier.

He caught her by the chin with his free hand. "Shh. Careful," he murmured. "Your team was supposed to go back out today," he reproached gently. "I came back here to call you for your briefing."

Heat rushed to Hinata's face. "S-sorry."

The chakra in his hand coughed and died, and he shook his head ruefully. "I am proud of you, for doing that for your friends," he admitted, ducking his head to meet her eyes. "Just - don't do it again. The mission can be postponed today, but the war won't always wait."

The waning sun warmed Hinata's face, and though breathing deeply burned her abused throat, she welcomed the fresh air after spending most of the day underground. The bustling townspeople hadn't looked twice at her, but the press of people has suffocated her nonetheless, and she was relieved to escape the city proper for Moe's favorite perch by the harbor. Like clockwork, Ida would saunter up any second now.

"Hey, Moe-chan! Check this - Moe-chan, what happened to you?" Ida grabbed her by the chin abruptly to get a better look at the angry bruising ringing her throat.

Moe tried to smile, but the corner of her eyes crinkled, betraying the fresh pain from the sudden movement. "Kumata," she whispered, and pressed her lips together. Her entire body ached and she could barely shuffle let alone walk, but her throat burned with fresh agony.

Ida frowned, her mouth a dark slash in her pretty face. "Told you to be careful," she said reprovingly. "Check this out." She brandished a poster at Moe, the kind the city officials used to post announcements in the square and throughout the streets. "There's some kind of new gang around mucking around the Kumata districts. They're real dangerous, and I want you to steer clear of that area for now. Especially since you got yourself beat up!" she scolded, and shoved the poster at Moe.

Moe took the poster and unfurled it. She sucked in a startled gasp. "W-where did y-you get t-this?" Hinata stuttered, heart pounding. The inked picture was of her - or rather, Kyuu, standing tall with battle fans brandished, face covered by a snarling wolf's visage and the rest of her in her fur cloak. Behind ink-Kyuu crouched Gaara, similarly masked and cloaked, fingers curled into claws. 'Yorozuku,' the poster read. 'Wolves: unknown organization wanted for questioning regarding criminal activities. Dangerous.'

"Coupla streets down. They just put 'em up. From the shinobi, I think." Ida looked her curiously. "What's wrong? Moe-chan?"

"I-I," Hinata panicked, mind fizzling into blankness.

Ida's eyes narrowed, then widened. "You saw them," she said wonderingly, "didn't you?"

She could not think of the words to dissuade the older girl, or a reasonable denial, so she nodded meekly. She glanced up at Ida beneath her eyelashes before fixating on the ground again.

Moe. She needed to be Moe right now, not Hinata.

Ida's gaze held a mixture of curiosity, horror, and badly concealed eagerness. "Did they do that to you?" she prodded. Moe nodded, still staring at the ground. "Did you see them real close?" Ida demanded.

"Yeah," said Moe, then frowned. "Yeah, but - " she waved a hand at her face.

"What did they want?" asked Ida reverently.

Moe paused and swallowed painfully. "A home," she whispered.

She kept the poster tucked into her waistband as she hurried back to her cellar in the South District, and it weighed down her steps and her mind. Her hands shook as she picked the lock, and she dropped her makeshift picks and her Moe persona both before she could jimmy the door.

Sai melted out of the shadows at the bottom of the stairs, a slight frown marring his normally expressionless face at her visible agitation. "Status?" he asked, looking her up and down critically for any obvious new injuries.

"I-I'm f-fine," said Hinata hurriedly. She yanked the poster out and thrust it at him.

Curiously, he took the paper and unrolled it. His posture stiffened as he scrutinized it thoughtfully. "Hmm," he said. "Shisui-sensei will want to see this." He reached behind him and unfolded a second poster, flattening it on top of the first.

Hinata's eyes widened. This figure was hidden behind a battered Konoha Anbu cat mask and plain cloak, but she recognized him even in sketched lines by build and posture. "T-that's - "

"Yes," said Sai grimly, surveying the ink likeness of Shisui-sensei.

'False Anbu wanted for assault, arson, and impersonation of a Konoha shinobi,' the poster read. 'Extremely dangerous: do not engage. Report all sightings to local authorities.'

Shisui-sensei sighed when he saw the posters, tired more than anything else. He studied them carefully, taking in every detail with a practiced eye. Finally, he rolled both back up. "Well," he said at last, looking back up to the pack ringing the table anxiously. "We have work to do, our Yorozuku."


	11. Chapter 11

Pack codename cheat sheet:

Team Suzaku (overall oldest):  
Rei = 0 = Temari (oldest)  
Ichi = 1 = Haku  
Ni = 2 = Neji (N for Neji)  
Team Byakko  
Shi = 4 = Sasuke (means death)  
Go = 5 = Sakura (like Gogo Tomago from Big Hero 6)  
Roku = 6 = Naruto  
Team Genbu  
Shichi = 7 = Gaara (longest name, also shortest child)  
Hachi = 8 = Sai (like that really loyal dog)  
Kyuu = 9 = Hinata (biggest number, youngest child)

* * *

Chapter 11: Itachi Really, Really, Positively Does Not Like Blood

Does anyone ask him what he likes though? No. No they don't.

* * *

MISSION REPORT D-90

Operative Cat-15 and target AT2 achieved rendezvous with targets AT1, AT3, AT4, allied noncombatant ANHS and allied combatants ACHN and ACNS, who had begun cohabitation with identification: Sabaku no Gaara, jinchuuriki, and identification: Sabaku no Temari, heiress to the Sandaime Kazekage. Designated as allied combatants ACSG and ACST. Both are battle-tested and exhibit no aggression towards targets AT1, AT3, AT4; allied combatants ACHN and ACNS, or allied noncombatant ANHS.

ACSG and ACST reported pursuit from Sunagakure probable; however, all past aggressors were subdued with prejudice. Cat-15 recommends continued alliance for better protection of targets.

Status of all: insufficient nutrition, otherwise normal.

Course of action: proceed to and establish new base of operations. Evade all pursuers if possible. Evaluate and monitor current abilities of all targets and allies. Provide critique and techniques to improve as necessary, including: techniques for acquiring food covertly or in an uninhabited environment; concealment in urban and uninhabited environments; defensive and offensive maneuvers.

No contact with enemy combatants.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

* * *

Itachi reached up to touch his mask. His fingers came away sticky and red-stained and he heaved an inward sigh. He seemed to spend just as much time cleaning off the mask as he did sharpening his kunai or oiling his sword. He crouched and apologetically reached for the nearest downed shinobi's shirt. Hanabi-ha barely had the supplies for feeding its shinobi, let alone extravagences like cloth for cleaning blood off blades.

He stood and flipped the katana back up into its sheath. He surveyed the scene carefully. Clean white sand had turned grey and red, with bits of glass and charred wood scattered among the churned-up dunes. The treeline had been burned back twenty meters, and plumes of smoke still twined lazily into the sky. The beach was pitted with large craters, and an entire sandspit had been blown away entirely, its remains swallowed by the unrelenting waves. Twelve crumpled bodies lay haphazardly on the shore or half submerged in the water, as if a careless child had discarded his dolls on his bedroom floor. He glanced back down at the nearest. The ends of the man's Kiri hitai-ate stirred limply in the wind, half-soaked in the blood seeping steadily from the wound in his chest where Itachi had stabbed him not a minute earlier.

He turned his back on it all and walked back towards the open water. There was nothing left for him to do here.

The waves were ablaze with the setting sun when he slowed his sprint just outside the camp. He paused to sign the passcode at the sentry before continuing in. Shinobi in battered armor and clothing stained by mud and blood glanced up and back down quickly as he passed on noiseless feet. He knew what they said: what shinobi wore his mask even among his own comrades? In a war such as this, where men slept head to foot and shared the same razors to shave, who was he to hide even his name? But Itachi's name was a weapon and a weakness in itself, and so he ghosted through the camp silently. Nobody called out to him, and he acknowledged nobody.

The command tent sat in the center of the camp, a healthy ten meters apart from the next nearest structures; Itachi sensed six chakra sources inside. He flared his chakra gently and entered without preamble. Six faces looked up with varying degrees of annoyance, but at the head of the table, jounin-in-charge Haraguni Aimi straightened.

"Take a break," she ordered. "We'll finish this in ten."

Haraguni was a no-nonsense jounin who had worked her way up through the General Forces until her promotion to jounin, after which she had automatically been reclassified to Command Corps. For that, she had Itachi's respect. Though she was only nominally in charge while Itachi was here, this was her first major wartime command, but she was no stranger to overseeing strategic engagements. She clasped her hands behind her back as the rest of the jounin filed out.

"Sector 37-25-E is clear again," said Itachi as soon as the tent was empty. "Twelve total enemy combatants eliminated; prediction of one jounin, five chuunin, six genin. Status here?"

Haraguni nudged a trio of small markers, two light blue and one a darker blue, off the map on the table. It did little to dent the number of the hundreds of similar markers carefully scattered across the table in a rainbow of colors. "Stable," she said. "Our teams have pushed the front to the islands at 35-24-N, but unless the loyalists withdraw, we'll have to put in more troops to hold them down. I'm sending in Kitajima and Yamanoha's teams later tonight."

Itachi nodded once in acknowledgement. "You have this well in hand," he observed. "I am returning to headquarters in eight hours, and will bring your report. Have you anything else you wish to convey to Command?"

Haraguni tossed him the paper report and ran a hand through short-cropped hair. "Just that we're ready and awaiting orders," she said. "But if you run into the quartermaster, rip him a new one. The last food shipment was entirely beans. These shinobi can't fight on beans ."

"Noted," said Itachi. "I will notify you when I leave. Until then, I will be in my quarters."

"Copy that," acknowledged Haraguni, fatigue weighing down her shoulders. "Have a good rest, captain."

Itachi slipped back out of the tent, and the jounin squad leaders clustered too-casually near the entrance shot him glances ranging from curious to wary to hostile. Though he knew each of them by name and through observation, they had little to do with him directly. As far as they were concerned, Itachi was a hunter-nin from the Kiri Hanran independently stationed at the Hanabi-ha base. He tipped his head up as he passed them, padding towards the small shack erected at the corner of the camp.

His quarters, as they were, were small enough that they could use it as a coffin to bury him if he died unexpectedly in his sleep. The lowest side of the slanted ceiling just barely brushed the top of his head, and there was room enough for a bedroll, a small side table, his equipment, and little else.

He pressed the tip of his finger to the wall and ignited his alarm seals with a spark of chakra. Only then did he reach up to pry the mask off his face. He flipped it over. Dried blood marred its smooth red-and-white surface, caked in the grooves of the Kiri symbol.

He closed his eyes briefly and set the mask aside. That would be a problem for six-hours-later Itachi. He pulled the bulky armor over his head next, tossing it down next to the table. Weapons pouch, holster, and sandals followed. He lay back at last, letting his aching muscles relax, and covered his eyes with one arm. He slept the sleep of the wartime shinobi: immediately, lightly, and insufficiently.

When he woke, he spent an hour cleaning his armor, oiling his sword, and taking careful inventory of his supplies. When he finished, he put everything away methodically and strapped on his equipment. He pushed out the door into the night.

Even good shinobi feared the dark when he knew what lay waiting; it was wise of him to do so. Itachi did not let such a fear consume him, but held it gently in the corner of his mind. The moon sent shimmering ripples across the ocean as Itachi stepped out onto the waves.

Jounin Haraguni's forward base was located at a particularly precarious position in the overall war effort, having been once been attacked thrice in a single day and consistently as it pushed every closer to Kirigakure. However, one would generally be attacked fewer times travelling backwards to Command than if one were scouting forward.

His trip today was uneventful. About six hours in, he slipped aboard the stern of a merchant ship, unaffiliated with either side, and for a full hour ignored both the crew and the Kiri jounin who stared at him suspiciously from the bow. This war still had rules; civilian crafts were strictly off limits for battle or even benign contact. He finished off a ration bar in efficient bites, then folded the wrapper and shoved it back into his back pouch. He left the passing fare in an envelope in the captain's door and dropped back over the side of the ship. He sank into the water and swam until the ship was out of sight, then surfaced and ran the rest of the way to Uzushio.

Uzushio no Kuni, after Uzushiogakure had quite literally been blasted off the map by Kiri, held nothing more than sleepy fishing hamlets, rice plantations, farmland, and one and a half functioning ports. Out of respect for the spirits of the dead, the Hidden Village itself had been left unmolested and sat abandoned on the northern tip of the southern island. Naturally, as shinobi were equally superstitious but far less fearful than civilians, this is where the Kiri Hanran chose to make its headquarters.

Itachi's instincts flared to life, and he twisted out of the way as the water erupted next to him. He landed in a crouch, one hand on the hilt of his katana.

"Stop. No further," demanded the insurgent, rising out of the water. He wore a rebreather over his nose and mouth that distorted his words, and his hair was done up in a bun. A sheathed katana rested at his waist. "Identify yourself."

"Hana-An-141, captain," Itachi replied, letting his hand drop slowly. "And you?"

The insurgent glared, wariness in the set of his shoulders. "Hana-An, my ass," he muttered under his breath. "Hanran-Gun-419, chuunin." Hanran - from the Kiri insurgency; Gun - from Guntai, a member of the General Forces.

"Reporting in to Command from 30-20 Forward Base 025," said Itachi. "Passcode 4-7-Nexus-8-9-9-Raven-Quota-Raven." He stepped forward, but the other shinobi drew his blade in a flash of steel, and Itachi lunged backwards, landing just out of reach. He narrowed his eyes.

"I'm going to need to confirm that," Hanran-Gun-419 said coldly, leveling the tip of the blade at Itachi. "Wait here. Don't move." He signalled with his free hand, and a seagull swooped out of the air far over his head and winged back towards land.

Itachi slowly moved his hand back and straightened from his ready crouch, keeping his attention on the insurgent. The sun sparked against the water, boring into his eyes, though he could not and would not close them. Though he would not let his posture show the how the day's long travel wore on him after days of non-stop combat, he very sincerely wanted to be horizontal for four hours, if not twelve.

Eventually, he sensed a burst of chakra, and the broad figure of Senzaki Ao, designation Hanran-An-046, commander in the Kiri Hanran, stepped out of a shunshin behind Hanran-Gun-419. "What's the situation?" he said without preamble.

Hanran-Gun-419 stiffened. "Commander," he greeted without taking his eyes off Itachi. "Just a routine identity check, sir."

Itachi waited patiently as the veins around Ao's covered eye briefly bunched with a surge of chakra, then relaxed. "Come with me, captain," the older man said brusquely, turning abruptly in a swirl of his haori. "As you were, chuunin."

"Apologies for the inconvenience," said Itachi as he fell in step with Ao back towards the island. "I did not expect you would be requested for something so trivial."

Ao gave him a critical once-over with his exposed eye. "You're wanted in a briefing," he said gruffly.

Itachi held back a grimace. Any briefing with the Kiri Hanran involved Terumi Mei making overtures at either him or Kakashi-taichou or both, Hanran shinobi glaring from just outside the room, and severe tests on his patience. "Very well," he said, and pragmatically let go of his longing for his bunk.

The Kiri Hanran headquarters sprawled out on top of the ruins of Uzushiogakure in a mishmash of makeshift wooden structures and tents. Shinobi in various states of preparedness, from fully armed and armored to simple Kiri chuunin-jounin greys and the bare minimum kunai holster, stared openly or subtly as they made their way to the command center. Salvaged from the sprawling Academy complex, the command center stood as a tragic and ominous reminder of the village that once had been. Wooden boards were nailed over gaping holes open to the rooms below, and the holes in most of the doors were papered over.

In the center of the complex, the teachers' office has been fortified and converted into main control room. As Itachi padded after Ao, he felt the gazes of dozens of shinobi boring into his back - guards lounged in nearby rooms and perched in the rafters, and to the one glared at Itachi with suspicious eyes.

"Captain Hana-An-141 is here," Ao announced drolly, pushing open the door. Itachi followed him in.

"Captain," Terumi Mei purred, lifting her head slowly from the mess of maps and reports on the mass of tables pushed together in the center of the room and regarding him beneath her eyelashes. She snapped her fingers dismissively at her less-than-impressed Hanran captains ringing the room. "Give us a minute boys, ladies," she ordered, and her shinobi slipped out without complaint. Ao closed the door behind the last and leaned against it, arms crossed over his chest.

Itachi touched his fingers to his mask in a silent salute when Kakashi-taichou looked up at him, and the other man nodded back once in acknowledgement. His hands were shoved casually in his pockets as he leaned back against an errant desk, keeping the entirety of the table's contents in his field of vision. "It's been a while since your last check-in, captain," Kakashi-taichou noted, returning his attention to the map.

"Hai," said Itachi simply. His report was not for their allies' ears. Kakashi-taichou nodded almost absently.

Across the room, Fukaya Maiko, designation Hanran-An-593, Mei's third-in-command, tilted her chin up challengingly. "How goes the north, captain?"

"It holds," Itachi said politely. "And the east, commander?"

Fukaya narrowed her eyes at him, but deigned to answer. "The Mizukage holds the east close to his chest," she said begrudgingly.

Itachi nodded, unsurprised. In a war where neither side possessed the shinobi necessary to patrol captured territory, Itachi's north front was prone to guerilla raids by either side, while the eastern front saw the brunt of the pitched battles.

Mei hummed. "Come, now, surely we needn't be so formal," she said. "It's only us, and I've even sent my captains out. I would love to see my allies face to face."

Kakashi-taichou ducked his head to peel his mask off, hooking it to his belt. He flicked a glance at Itachi, and only then did he follow suit. "I'd like to bring my captain up to speed," he said.

Mei flicked a dismissive hand. "Go ahead," she said. "Ao, come here."

"We're moving headquarters," Kakashi-taichou said without preamble as the Hanran shinobi clustered on the opposite side of the room. "Kiri Hanran and Hanabi-Ha both."

Itachi absorbed this silently. "Uzushio no Kuni is far from the frontlines," he said, both a statement and question in one.

"Aa," said Kakashi-taichou. "We've gained ground. We're too far away not to make effective battle decisions or respond to crises, and keeping our leadership away from the fighting takes some of our strongest shinobi off the board."

Itachi tilted his head in a silent question, and Kakashi-taichou shook his. Not the right time or place. "Very well," said Itachi. "Am I being reassigned?"

"Yes," replied Kakashi-taichou, eye crossing back over to the map. "Your partner as well."

"Ooh," said Mei brightly, giving up the pretense of not eavesdropping. "Will we finally meet this mysterious partner of yours at last? How is he? Or she?"

"My partner and I have been working separate missions," Itachi deflected blandly.

"Hana-An-031, wasn't it?" Mei mused, tapping delicate fingers against her lips. "Mmm. I'm sure our paths will cross soon enough." She clapped her hands together. "Now: the two of you are the official Hanabi-ha representatives for coordinating this strategic relocation, correct?"

"Aa," agreed Kakashi-taichou. "We're here with the confidence of Commander Nara and Tsunade-hime."

"Good, good," said Mei thoughtfully, after a just too-long hesitation. "Quite busy, are they?"

"Hm," said Kakashi-taichou noncommittally. "Commander Nara is triaging the most urgent intelligence reports, and Tsunade-hime is in the hospital today. A pair of chuunin got a little too friendly with some shark summons."

"A pity," Mei said. "Ao?"

"Moving our men and equipment will be a challenge," the older shinobi said grimly. "We'd like to propose a clear split in responsibilities between Kiri Hanran and Hanabi-ha to make the move more efficient."

Four hours passed in the preliminary planning session before Kakashi-taichou politely but firmly excused himself and Itachi out with the pretense of reporting to Tsunade-sama. Kakashi-taichou eyed him carefully as they wove their way back out of the Hanran command center. "When's the last time you ate?"

"Twelve hours ago," replied Itachi without hesitation.

Wordlessly, Kakashi-taichou steered them towards the mess tent. "Eat first. Debrief later."

Itachi lowered his voice to a register only the other shinobi's sensitive ears would hear. "Tsunade-sama?"

Kakashi-taichou shook his head. "In the hospital," he murmured. "But Shizune's doing the rounds today."

Ah.

As nominal second-in-command of Hanabi-ha, a title he shared with Nara Shikaku, Kakashi-taichou had been issued his own quarters in a dilapidated apartment complex that housed other former members of the Konoha Command Corps, the Shirei-bu. They took their meals from the mess tent to his apartment's living room. A flash of chakra lit the perimeter seals, and Itachi took his mask off, mirroring Kakashi-taichou.

"I know it's been a while since you took a break," Kakashi-taichou said, breaking the silence as they settled around his low table. "I wanted to tell you something before you hear it in the official briefing."

Itachi paused, rice halfway to his mouth.

"We're recalling Shisui," said Kakashi-taichou. "We're bringing in the kids. The war's reaching critical mass; we're closing in on Kirigakure, and all combat-ready shinobi are heading to the front."

Itachi set his rice down. "The plan was to keep them away from the war," he said mildly, even as the first waves of anger and panic sent fire spiking through his veins.

In response, Kakashi-taichou reached behind him and pulled a stack of paper from under the half-rotted couch. Itachi spared a moment to give the piece of furniture a wary glance before the other shinobi slapped one of the papers down on the table.

Itachi leaned over it and stopped breathing.

'Yorozuku,' the poster read. 'Organization of 6-12 individuals wanted for espionage, robbery, and other criminal activity.' Below the words was a crude ink drawing, but Itachi recognized the bone-masks San had carved for each of the children, the 'pack,' and the furred cloaks Shisui had bought when they found the children for the first time. Kakashi-taichou set down another, then another, all with slightly different words and illustrations but the same meaning: even with the Konoha-Kumo war, even with Danzo's attention diverted, Itachi's brother was no longer safe in Kitakyushu. The last few were not Yorozuku posters, but of a rogue Anbu. Itachi grimaced. "There is no need to bring them to the war," he argued. "There is always Tetsu."

Kakashi-taichou shook his head. "Staying half a year in samurai territory was risky enough," he said. "And San is not part of this war, but the kids are. They're genin now. They've infiltrated and evaded capture in a Konoha-held city; they're not helpless."

"They are still children," said Itachi, very carefully not balling his free hand into a fist. "Surely nine children will not affect the war overmuch."

"Maybe not," said Kakashi-taichou, his one dark eye fixed on Itachi. "But nine children - including one former Anbu trainee, one former hunter-nin, and two jinchuuriki - and Shunshin no Shisui will."

Itachi stared at his food and examined Kakashi-taichou from his peripheral for a long moment. "You did not want to bring Shisui back before," he noted.

The captain did not move, but he suddenly seemed far more tired than the steely-eyed commander he had been in Mei's command center. "We'll ease him in slowly. This war is not something I can protect him from any longer," he admitted quietly. "Tsunade-hime can't justify his missions any longer without revealing why she's keeping a top jounin and nine genin on the mainland, not when his primary mission hasn't yielded results." He took a swig of his water like it was something stronger. "And he's still a good shinobi. That hasn't changed."

No, but Shisui had.

"He will not be happy," Itachi warned. More than anyone else on their team, Shisui had wanted to keep the children away from the shinobi life for as long as possible, and doubly so for a war such as this.

"We're taking full precautions to keep all of their identities secret," assured Kakashi. "Shisui included. The masks San carved for the kids? That'll hide their faces from even Ao's Byakugan."

Itachi narrowed his eyes. "How?"

"Well," said Kakashi-taichou. "San is a witch."

Itachi stared at him blankly.

"Maa," Kakashi-taichou amended. "Some sort of priestess, probably. And she carved the same sort of privacy runes into the masks that she uses to keep her forest safe. Apparently her mother taught them to her."

"Her mother," Itachi repeated. "The...wolf goddess?"

"Yes," said Kakashi-taichou, equally nonplussed. "The runes have a blurring effect on the wearer, so no one can tell who they are as long as they keep those masks on. Pretty much like the standard Anbu masks. "

Itachi bleakly wondered how Naruto could be convinced to keep a mask on for more than two hours. "And Shisui? He has met Ao in battle before. He will recognize Shisui's chakra."

Kakashi-taichou grimaced. "I called in a favor," he said, and reached under the couch again. This time he produced a porcelain Anbu mask, like his own, but smooth and clean, painted with a smattering of feline grey-black spots. When he flipped it over, seals inked and carved spiderwebbed from the center.

There was only two men alive with enough knowledge in sealwork to completely disguise a shinobi's chakra. "What did this cost you?" Itachi asked at last.

Kakashi-taichou stared at the mask grimly before tossing it over to Itachi, who caught it automatically. "Too much," he said. "Let him know that if he breaks it, he owes me his firstborn. Your next mission is to take that - and his next set of orders - to him in Kitakyushu. Think of it as a vacation."

"Understood," said Itachi, tucking it away in his pack. He straightened his back slightly; it screamed in protest at his continued ramrod-straight position.

Kakashi-taichou eyed him knowingly. "The next briefing is not one you are required to attend, but I expect you in the briefing center at 1800 hours," he said. "Get some rest, Itachi."

"Hai," said Itachi, letting himself slump just a little.

"Your old quarters were reassigned," Kakashi-taichou informed him. "You're welcome to sleep here, though." He patted the couch. A chunk of rotted stuffing came away in his hand.

"Thank you for the offer, Taichou," said Itachi, giving the couch a wary glance. "I will sleep on the floor."

Kakashi-taichou's visible eye crinkled. "Nonsense," he said, casually tossing the stuffing off to the side of the couch. "What sort of host would I be if I let a guest sleep on the floor?"

Itachi blinked once, slowly, and followed the only viable course of action: he ignored him.

Itachi was glad to leave the Kiri Hanran-Hanabi-ha headquarters and its stifling animosity behind. The red-orange rays of the sun skipped over the waves as he set off, and by the time he reached the coast of the mainland, twenty kilometers north of Kitakyushu, the sun was rising at his back.

He picked his through the shadows where the sand turned into cliffs, towering high above the beach, hyper-aware of his bone-white armor and porcelain mask, but he sensed no one of significant chakra prowess, and the few on the beaches - fishermen, an elderly couple on a morning stroll - did not notice him as he ghosted behind them.

Itachi turned into the tunnels that would lead to the abandoned mine designated as Outpost 013 and came face to face with a battered Anbu cat-mask.

"Cousin," Shisui greeted.

"How is the cat-herding?" Itachi asked politely.

"Please," scoffed Shisui, rolling his eye. "You and I both know herding cats is much easier than keeping these brats in line. Come in. What are you doing here in person? Don't think I haven't noticed Kombu flying in and out of here," he warned.

Itachi shrugged one shoulder. "I could hardly sneak away from the frontlines to visit Sasuke myself," he defended.

"It's not like Kombu talks," said Shisui. "How's he even supposed to know that big-ass bird is from you? You've never pulled him out in front of Sasuke-kun. I haven't summoned a single crow myself."

"He knows," Itachi said simply.

Shisui shrugged and then glanced at Itachi suspiciously. "Really, what are you doing here? Gods know Hatake-taichou'd never send you on a milk run courier mission."

Itachi hesitated, and Shisui came to a full stop to face him, his exposed eye searching Itachi's face. "Taichou had a message for you," Itachi said at last. "He thought it best it came from me."

Shisui's shoulders slumped, and Itachi regretted the bitter understanding he saw in his cousin's gaze. "Hit me," Shisui said tiredly.

Itachi stared at him blankly and punched him in the shoulder. It was not a light blow.

"Ow!" Shisui yowled, rearing back. "You little shit! Who gave you permission to have a sense of humor?"

"Perhaps I have had too many katon sent my way while being told to 'lighten up,'" Itachi suggested.

"It's my sworn duty as your older cousin to prepare you for the realities of the world," Shisui sniffed. "And it is yours to respect your elders." He waved his hand at Itachi. "Come on, what's the message?"

Itachi heaved an inward sigh. "Operatives Hana-An-010 and Hana-Shi-000, -001, -002, -004, -005, -006, -007, -008, and -009 are to establish Forward Base 25-35W and await further instruction."

Shisui absorbed the information silently. "That sounds pretty close to the front," he said at last.

"It is the front," said Itachi mercilessly.

Shisui closed his eye and sighed, scrubbing one hand through his hair. "I understand," he said. "Captain."

Itachi instantly frowned, but Shisui held a hand up, forestalling him.

"Don't," he said quietly. "Orders I can take, but not from you. Not from my cousin." Itachi stayed silent for a long moment, and Shisui grimaced. "Sorry," he said wryly. "That's not fair to you. I know how you feel about this."

Itachi tilted his head in acknowledgement. He would not begrudge Shisui this sentiment. "You're being reclassified to take a forward command," he added.

"Yeah, I know, jounin-in-charge," said Shisui.

"Ah," Itachi said dryly. "It appears I have been remiss in conveying the message accurately. 'Operatives Hana-An-010 and Hana-Shi-000, -001, -002, -004, -005, -006, -007, -008, and -009 are to establish Forward Base 25-35W, whereupon Operative Hana-An-010 is to assume the title and rank of captain and await further instruction.'"

Shisui shoved him, sending him stumbling forward a step. "You ass ," he complained.

The corner of Itachi's mouth lifted in a victorious smirk. "Kakashi-taichou would never send me on a milk run courier mission," he reminded.

"I don't want a damned promotion," scowled Shisui.

"That is likely why Kakashi-taichou sent me to tell you," Itachi said reasonably. He slid the mask and scroll with Shisui's orders out of his back pouch and passed them both over to his cousin. "A shinobi employs any tool necessary, up to and including your goodwill towards your favorite cousin."

"You better watch your back," Shisui muttered. "I'm about to demote you to second favorite. Sasuke-kun hasn't set anything on fire for ten whole days." He opened the scroll first. "You know," he said, skimming its contents, "When she was scraping me back together, Tsunade-sama said she would never put me back in the field without consulting me first."

"You are already in the field," Itachi pointed out. "There are wanted posters of you that prove so. But in this case, I believe she may have simply signed a scroll Kakashi-taichou put in front of her."

"That bastard," Shisui grumbled without much heat. He flipped the mask up for a better look. "I take it this is for protection against an old friend?"

"Aa," said Itachi. "Kakashi-taichou would like me to convey to you that should this be damaged, he will marry your heir."

Shisui shuddered. "Good gods," he muttered. "He really sold his soul for this thing." He hooked the mask onto his belt. "All right, come on back to the mess," he said. "The kids'll get curious if I'm gone too long, and Neji-kun can read lips through the back of peoples' skulls now, the little terror."

The tunnels were nearly pitch black, but Itachi followed Shisui as he wound unerringly through the corridors until a faint flicker of light appeared ahead. Damp air turned a little fresher, cutting through the murkiness of the caves.

"Look alive, everyone, we have a visitor," Shisui announced, pushing his way through a rough-hewn wooden door. Itachi padded in after him and found himself in a relatively large, low-ceilinged room with a makeshift kitchen ensemble on one side - a large ice box, several large tables clustered in an approximation of counters, and crates of food or portable stoves - and a pair of long tables ringed by benches on the other side. At the tables, nine pairs of eyes moved between Shisui and Itachi, eight unimpressed and one eager. Itachi swallowed a fond smile.

"You can cut the act, Sensei, we know who that is," said Temari, propping her chin in one hand. Naruto and Hinata nodded agreement - the former empathetically, the later timidly.

Shisui threw up his hands in disgust and flipped up his mask. "Whatever, you brats," he growled. "Naruto, go get Itachi-sensei some food. Itachi, sit."

Naruto swung his legs over the bench and trotted off towards the pot steaming gently on the far counter, and Itachi slid neatly into his vacated seat and tucked his mask back onto his belt. "Otouto," he said serenely.

Sasuke's head jerked like he'd wanted to duck his head but stopped himself at the last second. "Hi, Aniki," he said shyly.

"I trust your training and missions have been going well?" Itachi prompted.

"We have successfully completed several missions," answered Sai from across the table. Beside him, Hinata shrank into her seat, face turning bright red, and Gaara narrowed his eyes slightly. "Last night - " He cut himself off as Temari jabbed an unsubtle elbow into his side. "Oh. I see," he said. "Disregard that."

"No matter," said Itachi, even as he felt rather than saw Sasuke bristling next to him. His baby brother was rather cute when he was territorial. "I am glad to hear you are doing well. He tilted his head back towards Sasuke. "I hope Kombu reached you well."

Sasuke's brow crinkled. "Kombu - oh! Yes, he did," he corrected himself, a faint dusting of red across his cheeks.

"Here's your food, Itachi-sensei!" Naruto interrupted cheerfully, plopping down a bowl and chopsticks in front of Itachi. He hopped over the bench to sit on Itachi's other side. "You're lucky, 'cause Haku made this, and if you came tomorrow you'd've had to eat Sakura-chan's slop - "

"Hey!" Sakura snapped, lunging to her feet and slamming her fists on the table. "You're one to talk!"

Haku reflexively covered his mouth to hide a tiny smile. Neji wrinkled his nose as the soup slopped over the side of his bowl. His Byakugan was active, and distracted as he was, he made no great protest.

"We can just say that Sasuke is the best cook in Team Byakko," Temari cut in with a warning glare at Naruto before the fight could escalate. Sakura sat back down.

"I look forward to trying his meals," said Itachi genuinely, and Sasuke ducked his head bashfully.

"Will you be staying at the base for a while, Itachi-sensei?" inquired Sai.

Itachi paused, setting down his chopsticks. Across the table, Shisui glanced up, eye whirling red, and caught him up in a genjutsu.

"No mission talk over breakfast," his cousin warned, words reaching Itachi alone through the illusion. "There's time to break the news later, in the briefing room."

"Hn," said Itachi noncommittally as Neji's eyes flickered between him and Shisui. "I will not be here long."

"So, whatcha talkin' about?" Naruto piped up. "Neji's doing the thing, so he sees Shisui-sensei using chakra and also his eye's red so he's doing that thing where he makes you see things nobody else can see cuz Shisui-sensei says you can't jump into a genjutsu if the person making it doesn't make you see it."

"They're called Byakugan and Sharingan," Neji muttered under his breath.

"LastnightNarutoandSasukeaccidentallykissed," Shisui said in a rush, projecting a split-second snapshot of the memory with mischief glinting in his eye before he broke the genjutsu.

"Shisui has a fondness for telling stories at inopportune moments," Itachi said blankly. "He detailed an incident last night in which you defiled my younger brother."

Haku choked on his rice and coughed as Sakura outright cackled. Sasuke turned bright red and froze stiff.

"I did not!" Naruto yowled. "That bastard wasn't watching where he was going!"

"We were sparring!" Sasuke snapped. "You were the one who tripped into my face. "

"You didn't dodge!" Naruto retorted, the tips of his ears blushing crimson.

"Masks up," Neji interrupted suddenly. "Team Morita inbound."

A general shuffle ensued as the children all reached for their bone wolf masks with well-rehearsed motions, Sasuke with perhaps more haste than strictly necessary. Shisui pulled his down from the top of his head, and Itachi followed suit.

"Bowls are on the counter, Morita," Shisui called as the man stepped through the doorway.

"Thanks - " Morita jerked to a halt when he caught sight of Itachi sitting in the midst of the masked, cloaked children. His team peered around him and immediately straightened.

"This is Hana-An-141, captain," Shisui introduced. "He'll be here for a couple of days."

The one-eared kunoichi - Akikio - behind Morita hissed something in his ear and he snapped to attention. "Captain!" he stammered. "Sir - what are you - I mean - "

"At ease," said Itachi. "This is not a briefing."

"Uh, yes, sir," said Morita, and reluctantly edged into the room when Akiko prodded him insistently in the back.

"Welcome to the back alley of the war, captain," said Nobu gruffly, pushing past Morita impatiently. "Nothing here but rubbish and a rat infestation. We getting moved or something, sir?" Behind him, Morita swallowed visibly.

"No," Itachi said honestly. He remembered the report on Morita's team and the brutalization of its members in the name of interrogation. It would be another month yet before Command sent for them to return to active combat, if they could be spared for so long.

"Team Genbu, up and at 'em," said Shisui, and Gaara, Hinata, and Sai stood obediently, clearing space for the new team to sit down. "Routine intel mission," he explained to Itachi. "Care to join them?"

Itachi had been running all night, but he did wish to know how his students fared. "I believe I will," he said, and very carefully did not react to Sasuke's slightly disappointed slump beside him. "If it will not jeopardize your mission, Operative Hachi?"

"No, captain," said Sai. "Kyuu will be aboveground, but you are welcome to accompany Shichi in active surveillance or myself in the onsite control center."

Itachi soon discovered that the 'onsite control center' was in fact an abandoned grocery store, from which Sai sent ink creatures scuttling in every direction, and 'active surveillance' involved mirroring Hinata's movements from underground, in the sewer. He followed Gaara as the boy wandered through the maze of tunnels, eyes half-lidded as he chose turns seemingly at random. Itachi sent out his chakra-sense, but he could not differentiate Hinata's from the faint press of thousands above them. "How are you following her?" he asked, breaking the silence for the first time since he and Gaara had left the rest of the team.

Gaara blinked, as if confused, and peered at him out of the corner of one black-rimmed eye. "Our - my sand," he said. "There is some in her pockets. It calls to me."

Itachi filed the fumble away for later consideration. "That is clever," he offered. Gaara shot him a somewhat alarmed glance but otherwise did not acknowledge his comment. "What is your purpose in following Kyuu?"

"Get her out alive if she is injured or captured," the jinchuuriki answered after a pause.

"Would Hachi not be better suited for an extraction?" Itachi prodded carefully.

Another long pause. Gaara shook his head slightly, a tiny jerk in response to something Itachi could not hear. "He uses too much chakra. For his scouts. He needs to save it to report back. I get her out."

"Hm," said Itachi thoughtfully. It seemed to be a functional system, though likely not one that had needed to be tested. Hinata's preparations had been thorough, from contacts to clothing to a complete personality transplant. Her alias 'Moe' was unlikely to be ruled suspicious by the Konoha shinobi that swarmed the city, as Nobu had worded it, like a rat infestation, because 'Moe' herself did not think herself suspicious. And it seemed Danzou's men were far too preoccupied with the war effort to be bothered with policing the city, considering the lackluster response to even a rogue Anbu in Kitakyushu.

The pair lapsed into silence once again. Itachi observed Gaara even as they turned down a slime-encrusted corridor. He held himself with a strange self-assurance, at odds with the barely-hidden agitation of his chakra shifting and roiling beneath his skin. He was not so feral as the defensive creature he had been when Taichou had corralled him back with the other children that first night in Tsuchi, whose very chakra had growled as he hunched back against his sister in the dark of the forest. His behavior had been exactly while jinchuuriki were commonly chosen from the kage's family, though clearly nobody had thought to account for Temari.

Gaara had grown, since the three seasons since their first meeting. He was comfortable here, in Kitakyushu, with his role as silent, unseen protector, comfortable with his team and not just with Temari. Itachi was proud of that, and sincerely regretted that he would upend that.

A small black shadow swooped over their heads. Gaara paused and regarded it thoughtfully. A tendril of sand slithered from his pack into his hand, and when he offered it to the ink-bird, it was small and round and solid. "Hachi wants something tracked," he explained briefly, watching the bird wing away. "He will drop the sand there for me to follow."

"Hm," Itachi responded, and Gaara sent him an unfathomable look out of the corner of his eye before continuing down the pipeline.

Itachi considered Gaara's retreating back. Dissatisfaction, irritability, desire. He was missing something here, something not mission-related. Sasuke had always been an easy child for him to read but Gaara particularly difficult with the Ichibi factored in. Sasuke's woes were easily enough assuaged with the offer of training. Perhaps that was applicable here as well?

"It has been three months since I last saw your team spar," he said. "I look forward to seeing how your skills have grown." No reaction but for a slight relaxing of the shoulders. Itachi decided to count that as a positive response. Shinobi children perhaps were not so different across the board.

One debriefing and one briefing later, Itachi stood with Shisui outside the briefing room as inside, nine shinobi children exploded into chaos over the prospect of going to war. Itachi had been awake for over thirty hours, and given that the briefing room was not in fact soundproof, the noise was beginning to hammer distractingly at the inside of his skull. Shisui glanced over at him wryly. "Let's find you somewhere to crash," he said. "I think you've caused enough of an uproar for today, hm?"

"I did no such thing," Itachi protested. The words sounded very far away.

"'You have all been ordered to position 25-35, west of Kirigakure, effective immediately. Please have all equipment ready to move by 0800 tomorrow,'" Shisui quoted sardonically. "And then you walked out when they started yelling."

In retrospect, Itachi perhaps could have worded that differently, but he was quite tired and no longer in an active combat zone.

Shisui slung an arm over his shoulder, carefully projecting the movement. "Come on," he said. "Let's find you a bunk. We don't really have a spare room in the north wing - that's where the pack and I crash - but there's an empty room in the south wing where Morita's team is - "

"No," Itachi interrupted. "Your room is fine."

Shisui stopped. "Sure," he said affectionately. "My room it is."

Shisui's room boasted only slightly slimy walls and one wooden deck spanning half the floor area, on which he kept both his equipment and his bedroll. Itachi took half a second to appreciate this before he let his mind short-circuit. He dropped his equipment next to Shisui's, shucked his sandals, and tugged the blanket over himself.

"Okay," Shisui said above him, amused. "Steal my blankets, no problem."

Itachi closed his eyes, deliberately ignoring him. After a moment, the deck shifted as Shisui climbed up as well, settling down with his back against Itachi's. "Sleep well, cousin," he murmured, his voice reverberating through Itachi's own chest. "I've got your back."

Itachi would have punched him again, but he was already mostly asleep.

When he awoke, he felt relaxed, which instantly put him on edge. He gently shifted Shisui's arm off his chest and sat up. The one other dorming room in the north side of the base, down the rough-hewn tunnel about three meters, rattled with the sound of shinobi children packing their clothes and equipment with what sounded like varying shades of panic. Comparatively, as Shisui never kept anything unpacked that he couldn't leave behind and Itachi hadn't needed to take anything out the night before, Itachi felt no great compulsion to do anything other than sit and savor the calm.

Behind him, Shisui shifted and sat up. "Hey," he murmured, scruffing a hand through his hair.

Itachi glanced over. His cousin was not wearing the bandages he'd taken to swathing his face with, and both eyelids slit open to reveal one grey-black eye and a hint of the glass that had replaced the missing one. "It is morning," Itachi noted.

"Yep." Shisui patted him on the head absentmindedly. "That's why they call you genius. Want some breakfast?"

Itachi paused, remembering Naruto's attempt at dinner the night before. "Who's cooking?" he asked cautiously.

Shisui huffed a laugh. "No need to worry. I am."

"Oh gods," Itachi said dryly, and sidestepped his cousin's jab.

Despite his needling, Shisui, given his seven-to-ten year advantage over the children, was a better cook than most of the pack. Itachi leaned against the counter and occasionally passed him a bowl or knife, but mostly just watched as he filleted a handful of fish, sliced a bundle of scallions, and julientined gobu root. He moved with an ease Itachi recognized from the battlefield, his shoulders loose and relaxed as he swept a rack of fish over the open flame. Shisui may have been bred for battle, but in another life, peace would have suited him well.

Temari shuffled into the kitchen first, hair tied up hastily and eyes half closed. "Morning, Itachi-sensei, Shisui-sensei," she said, and wandered over the benches to slouch over the table.

"Morning, Temari-chan," greeted Shisui cheerfully, scooping rice into a bowl. "Who's on watch?"

"Gaara," she yawned, resting her head on crossed arms.

Haku drifted in next, every stitch of clothing perfectly in place. "Good morning, Shisui-san," he said. "Good morning, Itachi-san." Itachi cracked an egg over the first bowl of rice and nodded back at him. "Do you need any help?"

"No, but thanks, Haku-kun," Shisui called over his shoulder. "Are you all packed?"

"Aa." Haku drew closer to the counter. "I believe everyone except Naruto and Sakura are finished. Sasuke is spectating, Hinata is attempting to help, and Sai and Neji are silently judging their efforts."

"Hm," said Shisui, transferring the fish to a platter. "That does sound about right."

Haku reached over for the finished rice-egg bowls. "Yesterday, at the briefing," he began hesitantly. "You said we were going to the front lines, Itachi-san."

"Yes," Itachi agreed implacably, even as Shisui hesitated for just a split second. "The war will be approaching Kirigakure itself very soon, and all active forces are being called to the front."

"Will we see Zabuza-san?" asked Haku a little too casually to not sound hopeful.

"Yes," said Itachi, and Haku tilted his head down to hide a smile. "I believe we will."

The beginnings of conversation were lost as the rest of the pack and the low-grade chaos Naruto trailed behind him like a cloak spilled into the kitchen, and Itachi turned back to his self appointed task of cracking eggs into rice. Gaara drifted in as Sai and Sakura carried the rest of the food to the table, and Itachi handed him the last bowl of rice.

"Status on Morita's team?" asked Shisui as he slid down next to Itachi.

"Late night training session. They are all still sleeping," Neji reported, letting his Byakugan fade.

"No mask meal! No mask meal!" Naruto chanted, stabbing for the fish with his chopsticks. Sakura elbowed him neatly in the ribs and stole the fish when he flinched.

Shisui rolled his eye fondly. Naruto would never be, as they said, a typical shinobi.

"How will we reach position 25-35?" asked Sai, passing the platter of gobu to Haku. "Logically, we cannot run the entire way, as Naruto would surely drown - "

"Hey!" Naruto interjected indignantly.

" - but stealing a ship from a Konoha port while Konoha is at war with Kumo is highly risky."

"We could disguise ourselves as Konoha shinobi," Sakura suggested, a mad glint in her eye.

"Pirate attacks are not uncommon," Neji contributed.

"Whoa, whoa." Shisui frowned, holding up one hand bemusedly. "Nobody's stealing a ship. We're just going to board one like regular passengers."

Nine pairs of eyes swung from Shisui to Itachi dubiously. "Really?" asked Sasuke.

"Yes," said Itachi.

Shisui rolled his eye. "You can't just trust Shisui-sensei, who's pulled your collective asses out of too many fires to count?"

"Sorry, sensei," Temari said, not the least bit repentant.

"Aren't you not supposed to say that word?" Naruto piped up.

"It is uncough," agreed Neji, wrinkling his nose.

"No, F-I-R-E," Sakura corrected. "Because of what happened last time with Sasuke and the sausage cart. Shisui-sensei thinks it'll give him more ideas."

"That was an accident," Sasuke scowled, slinking down in his seat a little.

Itachi had a feeling that was a story he would like to hear at greater length at a later time. "We will all disguise ourselves as regular civilians, and board the Okamaru, bound for islands off the south coast of Uzushio no Kuni," he said instead. "A hundred kilometers away from the destination, we will disembark and make out way on foot." He paused. "Yes?" he said to Sakura's hesitantly raised hand.

"Can we fly?" she asked hopefully. "Temari has her fan and Sai made this really giant bird one time."

Itachi glanced at Shisui, who nodded longsufferingly. There was another story not yet told there. "If San and Temari can spare the chakra, we may fly for a short distance after disembarking the ship," he allowed.

"Yes!" Naruto hissed gleefully, and even Hinata perked up. Itachi briefly wondered if he had made a grave mistake.

"I should not have to remind you how dangerous this will be," Itachi said quietly. "But I will do so anyways." The table grew abruptly silent as hands stilled on chopsticks. "You are entering real war - an active warzone," he said. "Everyone you meet out there will actively strive to kill you or subject you to an even worse fate. Here, in Kitakyushu, you have had the luxury of a distracted enemy and unaware targets, but in the battles for Kiri, you will have neither." He met each of their eyes, reading the fear and defiance and determination and resolve in each if them. "Trust each other, and trust your sensei," he finished. "There is no one who would rather see you survive this than we."

"Don't worry about us, sensei," Naruto chirped. "We'll kick their butts!"

"We have trained for this," agreed Neji.

"W-we're ready," Hinata added, raising her eyes to Itachi's.

"We'll make you proud," said Temari with fierce conviction.

"Senseeei!" Naruto whined, and Itachi wondered if he couldn't simply disappear over the side of the ship and leave Shisui to herd the children. He must have gotten quite good at it with three months' worth under his belt.

"Yes?" he asked patiently, keeping his eyes on the far horizon.

Naruto squinted at him suspiciously from over the bandages swathing his lower face. His sun-bright hair had been dyed a deep red-brown, and he had attempted to wear colored contacts, only to poke his eyeball too many times by mistake, and had so given up. His eye was still red and puffy. "Are we there yet?"

Itachi could just genjutsu him into silence, and no one would be the wiser. "No," he said with remarkable patience. Then, struck by sudden genius, "Why don't you ask the other sensei what we will be having for lunch?"

Naruto perked up. "Ooh," he said, and pattered off to the opposite side of the ship. Itachi watched him go remorselessly before turning back to the vast sea.

After a moment, a more unobtrusive presence replaced him. Itachi allowed himself a small smile as Sasuke leaned against the rail beside him. "I didn't know you had crows," his brother said gruffly, conscious of the prying ears aboard the ship. His voice was still too high for Itachi to take him seriously.

"My cousin kept them," Itachi said. "After he died, he left them to me." Except he didn't die, or he didn't stay dead. Itachi remembered the first time Kombu and his flock had come to him, perching like gargoyles in his favored training ground until he was surrounded by the death-omens, the vise that squeezed his chest when Shisui's favored Mirin had presented their summoning scroll, his cousin's name faded into grey just as their contract had faded after his death. Shisui was now the only summoner in the crows' contract to appear twice.

Sasuke absorbed that quietly. "I've never seen them before." Sasuke had been five when Itachi inherited the crows, but Itachi had never summoned the flock in Konoha or on a team mission. He'd kept the flock and what they represented a secret, buried down in his ribcage next to his heart.

Itachi did not like to think of what Orochimaru had done to Shisui, how he must have chased his cousin's spirit from his mortal body long enough to severe a summons contract before dragging him back. He had never liked summoning the crows those first months because of what they meant, but gradually the flock became his as much as Shisui's. "My cousin did not keep them out in the open, and neither did I," he answered.

For all that Shisui had been the Uchiha's prized dark horse until his disappearance and presumed death, his known idiosyncrasies - many friendships outside the clan, no particular predilection for katon jutsu, use of a tanto instead of a full katana - had been outnumbered by those he kept secret, including his crow summons when the Uchiha's favored contract was with the ninneko.

"I like them," Sasuke said decisively, dragging Itachi's attention back to the present.

"I am glad," said Itachi, glancing down fondly at his brother's now short-cropped brown-blond hair. "I did not mean to be separated from you for so long." He paused. "Perhaps you can show me what you have learned in that time, later," he suggested.

Sasuke straightened slightly before forcibly relaxing. "Yeah, maybe," he said, keeping up the pretense of disinterest.

" Fellow sensei, " Shisui gritted out behind him.

Itachi turned to see a wide, fixed smile plastered on his cousin's face. In the background, Naruto peered at them, waving his hands animatedly as he chattered at a stonefaced Gaara. Like vultures sensing a dying animal, the rest of the pack perched casually in their vicinity. "No," Itachi said politely. "We two do not require food at this time."

Shisui glowered at him, and had they been on dry land Itachi was quite sure he would have attempted to incinerate him with the force of his glare alone. "I will get you," Shisui promised, and stalked towards the stairs that would lead below deck. The pack trailed him down in twos and threes.

Itachi did not watch them go, but instead stretched out his chakra-sense as far as it would go. Civilian ships had been neutral ground since the war began, but the oceans were not.

By the time the ship reached the drop point, night had fallen. The ever present ocean wind streaked sticky fingers through Itachi's hair, and he was glad to be able to bundle it back into its customary ponytail.

"Over, over, over," Shisui urged, chivvying the pack over the side one at a time. Once again swathed in their fur cloaks and bone-masks, they vaulted over the railing silently and lightly. Shisui hopped over after them, and Itachi followed last of all, hunter-nin mask over his face once again. The Okamaru plowed past, showering the eleven crouched atop the surface of the water with seaspray in its wake.

"Hachi, you're up," ordered Shisui.

Sai nodded acknowledgement and swept out a scroll as long as his arm. His brush danced over the surface, and a great seahawk bloomed in black and white. He lifted his hand into a seal, and in a bust of air and chakra, the creature peeled off the paper and took wing under their feet, growing ever larger until its wingspan rivaled the Okamaru's length. Sai staggered as his foot slipped, unbalanced by the loss of the chakra he'd used to will his bird to life, and sand snaked around his arm to haul him back upright.

"Good to go?" asked Shisui, watching him balance himself on the neck of his creature.

"Hai," said Sai, rolling up his scroll and sliding it back under his cloak. "Until the chakra in this construct is fully used, it will bear all of our weights." On a silent signal, the construct beat its wings powerfully and swept them high above the waves.

Itachi had leapt and run through trees, but flying was an entirely new experience. His crows were minor summons, nowhere near large or strong enough to bear him on their backs as Sai's ink hawk did now. Had anyone asked, he would have professed no great love or hatred for the experience, but in truth, after just one minute in the air, Itachi would not have chosen to fly if it were not the most efficient option. Each stroke of the wings jarred his entire body, and Itachi appreciated for perhaps the first time the intimate knowledge Sai must have for the mechanics involved in keeping such a creature aloft.

Nevertheless, he settled in a loose crouch on the bird's back. Neji knelt at his side, his doujutsu active as he fixed unseeing and all-seeing eyes on the horizon.

Itachi watched as the ocean flashed by, mentally checking off landmarks on his mental map as Shisui directed Sai at the bird's head and the pack settled in alertly between them and himself. The ink construct was admittedly much faster than the Okamaru, and as he discovered as they both overtook and dwarfed a flock of seagulls, much faster than an ordinary animal. Time and waves alike sped past.

"Ah," said Sai abruptly when the moon had long passed its zenith. "I believe - "

The rush of air muffled Sakura's surprised shriek as the ink-creature dispelled with a soft puff. Itachi's stomach slammed into his lungs, ripping his breath away as the ground suddenly dropped out from beneath his feet, plunging him into a freefall. He twisted midair, grabbing for Neji, who was nearest, and bleakly indulged his justification in his distaste for flying.

"Hinata-sama," Neji gasped, even as he hooked one arm around Itachi's shoulder. The ocean sparkled ever closer beneath him, but the roar of wind and vastness of the blue-black sky battered his senses and he took a precious few seconds to consider his options.

A whirl of movement caught his eye as Temari whipped the fan off her back and snapped it open instinctively, catching her fall and bearing her back up. She leaned over the edge and snagged Hinata by the back of the cloak, dragging the smaller girl up behind her. Haku threw out his hand and slammed feet-first into the ice mirror that appeared in a flash of light.

Itachi could brace his own fall from any height, and he knew Shisui could as well. However, the children would not have had much opportunity to perfect the technique, and Itachi would greatly prefer they not attempt it for the first time from four hundred meters above the ocean. Shisui threw himself into a midair shunshin, tackling Sasuke out of his tumble, and Itachi felt a rush of relief and gratefulness and guilt.

Five meters below Itachi, Gaara's eyes closed. They had fallen far enough now that through the stinging of his eyes and hair whipping in his face, Itachi could see the ocean churning beneath them. A curious circle frothed directly beneath them, and from this erupted a massive fountain of sand. Like branches towards the sun, the pillar streamed upwards, reaching for Gaara and the others with grasping claws. Too fast.

"Gently!" Shisui shouted, the word nearly carried away by the wind.

Gaara bared his teeth in a snarl of concentration, eyes slitting open, and Itachi could not tell if the green glow of his eyes was chakra or just a trick of the light. Naruto hit first in a plume of sand, then Sakura and Sai to either side of him with audible thumps. Gaara alighted behind the three, the sand cradling him as it collapsed in on itself, carrying them down to the water.

Itachi twisted away to the side of the sand-tree for a cleaner impact on the ocean's surface and gripped the back of Neji's neck with a stabilizing hand. He landed in a crouch, and the force of his landing sent a shockwave blasting through the water beneath his feet. Not a second later, a second ripped through the waves as Shisui hit the water.

Cautiously, Itachi let go of Neji, who wobbled before finding his feet. He eyed the boy carefully. "Are you unhurt?"

"Aa. Thank you," Neji said grudgingly, stepping away hastily. His roughly-cut hair stuck out at odd angles behind his mask, and Itachi forced down the sudden urge to smooth his hair down. Neji had never quite seemed one for gestures of affection.

"Oh, man, that was awesome!" Naruto breathed, stumbling off the sand onto the choppy waves. "That was super cool. Gaara, you're so cool!" Gaara's mask had been knocked askew and his face had turned red, but from embarrassment or the wind Itachi was not sure.

"That was crazy," said Sakura, voice still shrill. "I can't believe we didn't die."

Shisui stepped over the remains of Gaara's sand as it sank back below the waves. "That was a close one," he said unconcernedly. His new mask still sat perfectly in place, hair wind-tousled as ever. Behind him, Sasuke did an unwitting impression of a cat that had been caught out during a windstorm. "Good catch, Gaara-kun." He peered up at the sky to see Temari's fan still circling above them, but drifting lower.

Moonlight glinted off the ice mirror that grew laboriously from the sea spray, and presently Haku's image appeared before the younger shinobi himself stepped out. Like Shisui, he appeared entirely unruffled, mask still firmly in place and cloak draped about his shoulders as if he had gone on a midnight stroll. "That was unexpected," he noted placidly. "I will have to suggest that we run the rest of the way."

"I do not have the chakra to animate another construct of that size, in any case," Sai admitted, grabbing absently for Naruto's shoulder for support.

"We are within fifty kilometers of the target site," said Itachi, scrutinizing the waves. "Continuing on foot should prove no great obstacle. However, we should move quickly. A chakra output of that magnitude would not have gone unnoticed."

Temari's fan tipped to deposit her and Hinata atop the sea foam. She landed in a crouch, swinging the fan back shut. "What does that mean?" she demanded.

"Gaara-kun used a lot of chakra to catch our people here," said Shisui, patting Sakura on the head. "In this kind of war, Kiri will probably send a scouting party to find out where we set up a base, and if they think we're a big enough threat, they'll send a squad to take us out."

"They're going to try and kill us?" Naruto yelped.

"It's a war, idiot, of course they're trying to kill us," Sasuke snipped back, eyes still wild behind his mask.

"Yeah, but - " Naruto waved an expansive hand at the ocean around them. "Now?"

"Kiri shinobi are more at home in the water than shinobi of any other nation," Haku interjected helpfully. "It is easier to catch you off guard when you are exposed like this."

"What do you mean, 'you?'" Sasuke said slowly.

"I did used to be a hunter-nin of Kirigakure," Haku pointed out. He glanced at them apologetically. "Konoha shinobi were the easiest to take down on open water."

Naruto looked mortally offended. "What about Suna?" he complained. "They don't even have any water!"

Temari shrugged. "There's the elemental disadvantage to consider, too. Suna shinobi don't do much water-walking, but it's not too different from sand-walking."

"As much as this self-education thrills me as your sensei," Shisui interrupted, "we really need to go. Itachi?"

Although this was technically Shisui's command, Itachi's sense of urgency did not have time to politely and respectfully argue his cousin into making the decisions. "Ichi will take point with me," he said, nodding at Haku, who inclined his head gracefully. "Rei and Ni will follow. Shi, Go, and Roku after, then Shichi and Kyuu. Hachi and Juu, rearguard." He paused, and Naruto raised his hand. Itachi resisted the urge to sigh. "Yes?"

"Do you have a cool codename?" Naruto chirped.

Itachi stared blankly. "Hana-An-141, captain," he said, and turned. "Ni and Kyuu, trade off keeping watch," he ordered, and took off in a sprint across the waves, Haku by his side.

"We can't call him that," Naruto huffed distantly behind him. "That's way too long."

"Logically, we can use his identifying number, as the rest of us do," suggested Sai.

"141? Hyaku-shi-juu-ichi is way too long," Temari disagreed from five meters back. "And if we use Ichi-shi-ichi it just sounds like you're calling Ichi and Shi." Itachi did not sigh or pinch the bridge of his nose, though he was beginning to see the appeal. If Temari joined the conversation, it legitimized the topic of discussion.

"He's a captain," Sasuke contributed. "Just call him 'captain.'"

"We can't call him captain, the captain's captain," Naruto argued.

"What about just 'sensei?'" asked Sakura, sounding slightly out of breath.

"Not your sensei," Gaara grumbled, the words nearly carried away by the wind.

"Enemy territory, kids," Shisui reminded from the back. "Let's cut the chatter."

A shinobi knew better than to gamble on one's luck. The gods would surely strike down such presumption, and barring that, an enemy would simply find a hapless prey who had let their guard down to indulge a flight of whimsy. Hope, however, had sustained all sorts of lives through innumerable trials, and did in part fuel Hanabi-ha at large. Thus, Itachi was both unsurprised and disappointed when Hinata called, in Kyuu's unwavering voice, that a team of four shinobi each was approaching from the front on either side.

An excellent sensor could report four shinobi with well-developed chakra systems, two with mildly developed chakra systems, and another five with the ability to manipulate chakra. A merely good sensor would sense nine child-sized chakra sources and two muted adult-sized chakra sources and and the execution of a chuunin-level jutsu.

Several possibilities, then, for the approaching Kiri shinobi: eight shinobi of upper Guntai caliber judged to be able to handle eleven assorted Guntai genin and chuunin; eight shinobi of both the Guntai and Shirei-bu capable of taking down suspected Shirei-bu genin teams; or a fully Shirei-bu squad capable of completely eradicating other chuunin-jounin teams.

No chances.

Itachi glanced over his shoulder and met Shisui's eye. His cousin nodded once.

"Kyuu, north team. Ni, south. Tell me everything you can about the shinobi - weapons, chakra systems, body build," Shisui ordered.

"North side - three male, one female," Hinata reported. "Estimate three chuunin, one jounin from chakra system development. Female and jounin male are slight and carry basic weaponry. One male medium build with a katana, one male heavy build, wrapped hands."

"South side, also three male, one female," said Neji. "I predict all four are jounin with well-developed chakra systems. One male, one female carry katana. Based on body language, the female is the leader. One other man is medium build and carries basic weaponry, the other carries fuuma shuriken."

"Team Suzaku, we're going in hard and fast," Shisui decided calmly. "Target the north team only. Ichi, get your team in, then Rei and Ni, you have the swordsman. I'll meet you there; I'll take the jounin. Ichi, box the last two in until Team Byakko gets there."

"Hai," Haku acknowledged, his voice gone cold and hard. Temari and Neji echoed him, exchanging glances.

"Team Byakko, you're in charge of the heavy male," Shisui continued. "You're not as fast as Ichi or I, but get in as quickly as you can and either take him down or stall until Ichi is done with his target."

"We got this!" Naruto reassured.

"We won't let you down," Sasuke agreed, voice low.

"Team Genbu - " Shisui hesitated for a moment. "Once we go after the north team, we'll have a team of four jounin who are going to do their damndest to get to the fighting. Your job is to stop them, because if a single one of them gets to us before our battles are over, the chances of one of us dying triples. Itachi will engage the jounin, and hold as many as he can for as long as he can when they pursue, but he can't be everywhere, and neither can I. You don't need to face them directly, just deflect. Got it?"

"Hai," Sai responded crisply.

Itachi's hand ached for the hilt of his katana. He settled for training his eyes to the side, towards his four targets. By himself, he would take his time and pick them off one at a time, but the circumstances and the stakes were different today.

"One kilometer and closing," Neji reported.

Most shinobi could effectively shunshin half a kilometer into or out of battle and still have the wherewithal to fight, while gaining the distance or element of surprise to do so effectively. As far as Itachi knew, Shisui had once performed a shunshin six kilometers into battle and single-handedly extracted a besieged genin team. Although Shisui had skirmished in the streets of Kitakyushu, he had not fought in a pitched battle since the night his eye had been stolen, but Itachi recognized the hard set in his cousin's eye. Like many of his comrades who had seen death young, the war had never truly left him.

"On my mark." Shisui's voice took on the hunter's purr Itachi had not heard in five years, the promise of danger that other shinobi had literally fled from after realizing who had spoken.

"Five hundred meters," Hinata said.

"Go!" Shisui snapped, and vanished in a burst of chakra. A surprised shout broke the silence in the distance as he landed in the middle of the Kiri team, blade first.

Immediately, Haku dragged Temari and Neji through the mirror that materialized in a flash of ice and chakra. A twinkle of light across the water answered, and the team exploded out the mirror on the far side.

"Charge!" roared Naruto, barrelling across the water, Sasuke and Sakura at his heels. Itachi perhaps needed to have a conversation with him regarding the wisdom of letting the enemy know one's intentions.

"Team Genbu, intercept!" Itachi ordered as the south team broke into a run, and darted forward.

He threw out a wide genjutsu first, snaring the entire team in a sensation of the water beneath their feet growing thick and sticky, dragging them down. One stumbled; the rest barely paused before shaking off the illusion. "Suiton: Mizuame Nabara," he muttered, and this time the water that sucked them down was no illusion.

The ocean rumbled, and a wall of sand breached the waves. Hinata dashed behind him on light feet and leapt up on top, drawing both her fans in one smooth movement as she sank into a ready crouch on the crest of the rising wall. High above, Sai circled on a small ink bird.

Itachi stepped forward unhurriedly as the Kiri team escaped his trap one by one.

"Four against one, traitor," the leader said coldly, drawing her katana in a hiss of steel. "Tell your genin to come home before they are labelled the same."

Itachi tilted his head, the stolen hunter-nin mask still covering his face. "I cannot do that," he admitted. "I will end this quickly."

"Damnit, we don't have time for this," snarled one of the shinobi behind him.

"Hirai and Yoshida, go help Ibuka's team," the kunoichi directed without taking her eyes off Itachi. "We can take care of this."

The two shinobi nodded sharply, but as they leapt forward, Itachi brought his hands up in a seal, and a mizu bunshin blurred up out of the water to block their path. "I'm afraid I cannot let you do that," he said, and drew his sword with his bunshin in tandem.

The kunoichi lunged to attack, and Itachi sank into calm. He deflected the first slash and flicked his own blade backwards, but she twirled out of the way. Movement flashed in the corner of his eye, and he threw himself into a backwards shunshin as the second swordsman bisected the air where he'd been standing.

One of the shinobi facing Itachi's mizu bunshin ducked its slash and slammed a kunai through its chest, dispelling it in a splash of water. The other leapt over Gaara for the top of the wall, and shouted in surprise as the wall stretched reaching claws back towards him. Hinata dropped down to dart along the sand arm towards him.

Itachi activated his Sharingan in a split second and hurled another genjutsu at the second shinobi leaping for the wall before blinking the doujutsu away as the other man froze. He turned in time to sidestep the kunoichi's pounce and whirled out of the way of the second swordsman. Itachi would have to trust the children to keep the jounin busy for now.

"Kage bunshin no jutsu!" Naruto's faint shout rose above the clash of metal, and a brief burst of fire bloomed from beyond Gaara's wall. A shriek cut off midway.

"You bastards!" the swordsman snarled, swinging hard and fast at Itachi's neck.

Itachi executed a neat shunshin, then another in quick succession to evade the swordsman and kunoichi's blows. "Suiton: Suidan no Jutsu," snapped the shinobi who'd been caught in Itachi's genjutsu, and Itachi leaped up high as the suiton tore through the air, leaving deep divots in the ocean's surface.

"Suiton: Suiryūdan no Jutsu," Itachi countered, flashing through the seals one-handed, and his dragon reared up out of the water and lunged towards all three with a fanged maw. He chanced a glance backwards at his team, besieging the Kiri shinobi. Spikes of sand shot out of the wall, dogging the shinobi's steps as he swung his folded fuuma shuriken at Hinata, who countered with a battle-fan. Ink birds dove at his eyes, and he swiped at them with the kunai in his free hand.

Itachi's attention snapped back abruptly as the kunoichi erupted out of the water directly in front of him. He deflected her, slipping out of her path, when she whirled back towards him. He ducked her next blow, reversed his grip on the hilt of his katana, and took three quick steps back to stab it backwards into the swordsman charging at him from behind. The tip sank cleanly into the shinobi's chest and straight out his back. The man choked. Itachi yanked the blade back out in one smooth movement, and blood splattered on his cloak as the man tipped forward, motionless, the sword dropping out of one nerveless hand and sinking below the waves. Itachi brought his katana, still dripping blood, back down to his side and carefully eyed the kunoichi who had pulled up short.

The kunoichi stared at the body of her teammate, eyes narrow and mouth twisted into a disgusted grimace. "How dare you," she said softly.

Itachi said nothing, as there was nothing to be said. He knew what he was; war made monsters of every man.

The kunoichi swept her blade behind her. " Dance of the Cicadas ," she snarled, and blurred forward until first two, then four of her and her clones streaked towards him.

He could not move backwards; Gaara's wall would box him in. Lightning-fast, Itachi drew a kunai to block the blade whistling towards his left side and deflected a strike at his throat before flicking his sword down, catching another blade on his katana's and another on its hilt. He shoved, desperation lending him extra strength, and hurled his kunai as he dove under a swinging blade. It flew true, and then Itachi faced three of the relentless kunoichi.

"Incoming!" Hinata's nervousness bled into Kyuu's breathless voice. "Team of four jounin towards the north team!"

None of them had the ability to help their teammates in the other battle. "Hold position!" Itachi ordered, spinning out of the way of the kunoichi's assault. It was time to end this fight. He substituted out of the way of a water tendril lashing through the air from the other shinobi. He substituted again almost immediately, out of another of the kunoichi's two-point attacks, and landed with his back to open water.

"You're done for, now," sneered the ninjutsu specialist, hands already flickering through another set of seals. "You and your little kiddies over there."

Itachi narrowed his eyes in response. Hinata gasped behind him, high and panicked, and he glanced up to see her stumbling backwards from the Kiri jounin as he leaped above Gaara's grasping sand. With a snap of his wrist, the fuuma shuriken extended and he hurled it, knocking one of the fans out of her hand. Sai's bird dove in a sharp arc, but a second shuriken clipped its wing and splattered the construct in a spray of ink.

Then Itachi had no time to look, because the water rose up around him like snake heads ready to strike, and he leaped out of the way, straight into the blades of two of the kunoichi. He swung his katana up and released the chakra buoying his feet, diving into the water beneath her; at the same time, he wove his chakra into a potent genjutsu so she would see him charging her.

She froze, and her bunshin dispelled one after the other as she watched them meet their end under Itachi's genjutsu. She would see her death, too, and Itachi's illusion would make it reality.

Now to deal with the ninjutsu specialist.

A shunshin put him behind the man, who swung around with a snarl on his face, and the water beneath Itachi's feet erupted in a geyser. Itachi let the momentum carry him up, flipping sideways, and darted forward. His katana met a kunai, his backswing hit wood as the shinobi substituted out of the way, but Itachi knew where he'd be and snared him in another genjutsu when the shinobi alighted behind him. It took only a second for the shinobi to rip himself free of the hastily-constructed illusion, but Itachi only needed the one second to slide his blade beneath the man's ribcage.

Hinata cried out. Malevolence surged behind him, and Itachi glanced up sharply to see Gaara's sand snare the last hapless Kiri jounin, crawling up his ankle and up the struggling shinobi's chest as Hinata stumbled backwards along the sinking wall, red-stained hand clutched to her arm. Sai dragged himself out onto the water's surface. Itachi ran.

Sand closed over the shinobi's face. "Shichi!" Itachi barked, but Gaara's eyes glowed golden beneath his mask and he clenched his hand into a fist.

Hinata let out a muffled yelp as blood rained through the air, splattering her liberally. "Come down," Sai urged her, darting frantic glances at their teammate, who stood stock still, staring at the sand cocoon that had once held a man. Around him, the sand shifted, as if waking from a long sleep.

"Hachi, get her out of there," Itachi commanded, waking the Sharingan in his eyes. The Ichibi did not care whether Gaara considered them friend or foe. Sai leapt up, wrapping an arm around Hinata to carry her off the collapsing sand and over the other side, and Itachi landed in a crouch, face to face with Gaara. The jinchuuriki's eyes snapped to his, the beginnings of a snarl carving sharp furrows around his eyes. "The threat is gone," Itachi said. "Calm down, Gaara."

At the sound of his name, Gaara's eyes flickered, losing their acidic edge and fading back to green, but at once he shook his head savagely, and the gold flared.

"Calm!" Itachi repeated insistently, this time layering the word with genjutsu. He preferred visual genjutsu; he had never been as proficient as Shisui in the realm of suggestive genjutsu. Gaara swayed, blinking confusedly as his eyes settled back towards their natural color. "Calm," Itachi said one more time for good measure, pouring as much chakra as he dared into the genjutsu, and Gaara stared back at him placidly, the sand around him slowly sinking back into the ocean.

With the sand gone, Itachi could see the clash of light and metal as the other battle raged. Across the open water Sakura was thrown backwards, and she skidded across the surface on her side as Naruto dove at their opponent, fists first.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hinata stumbled, and Sai reached out a steadying arm when her foot broke through the water's surface.

"Status?" Itachi said sharply, glancing sideways at them.

"I-it's a m-minor i-injury," Hinata panted without releasing her death grip on her arm. Blood trickled from beneath her hand, but it indeed did not seem life threatening.

"My chakra reserves are low," added Sai.

"T-the new j-jounin have a-almost r-reached the o-other t-teams," Hinata whispered. Her face was pale - from blood loss or fright Itachi could not be sure.

Itachi's eyes slid briefly to Gaara before a spike in chakra heralded a plume of fire in the distant battle. Out of time. "Stay back. Your priority now is evasion. Watch out for your team." He tilted his head towards Gaara, swaying unsteadily now.

"Understood," said Sai.

Itachi broke into a sprint, streaking across the surface of the water with renewed urgency. He stretched out his chakra sense and his heart sank as the four new shinobi's chakra collided with the tangle of chakra that comprised the current battle.

Metal flashed. Sakura shrieked, high and anguished. Shisui's chakra spiked, enraged.

Wait, said Itachi's caution, so he did not immediately throw himself into the furthest shunshin he could manage. There was more at stake here than any single one of them. Instead he gathered his chakra as he ran, held it just below his breastbone so that just a flash of chakra would ignite his eyes, and with them a genjutsu.

Itachi blinked and his doujutsu burned into existence and in that moment in time immortalized the tableau: Haku's senbon held like claws protruding from one shinobi's chest through his flak jacket; Temari swinging her fan grimly over Neji's head as he skidded backwards; Shisui with his burning fury and the path he would rip through three shinobi with fire chakra sharpening his blade; Naruto face up in the water, eyes closed and the hilt of a katana emerging from his abdomen; Sakura with crimson splattered on her mask as she lunged over his prone form; an answering bloody glow from Sasuke's eyes. Then Itachi cast his genjutsu and with it dissipated his Sharingan and the world sped back to real time. He landed behind the jounin facing his brother who turned too late, still entangled in Itachi's genjutsu, and with a dispassionate jerk of his katana cut the man's throat before he could speak.

Shisui landed behind him in a spray of water, blood splattering his blade where he had scored his enemy. "Cover me!" He snapped, and whirled. He skidded into a crouch at Naruto's side as Sakura and Sasuke hovered above him, terrified and furious at once.

Chakra swelled; Itachi recognized it, and so did the Kiri shinobi. The man charging at him pulled up short, eyes going wide, and was promptly bisected at the waist by one Kubikiribocho.

Zabuza landed in a crouch among the three remaining shinobi like a fox among chickens, one hand wielding his massive blade with ease, and they scattered. "Pursue?" The older man growled, eyes flickering after the fleeing jounin.

Itachi calculated the chances of one of them recognizing Sasuke's nascent Sharingan for what they were. "No survivors," he said, heart heavy.

"Suzaku, with me," Zabuza snarled and charged.

In the wake of his uncharacteristic brutality, Haku's mask too dripped blood. He reached out imperiously and his ice responded to his call. He took Temari by the shoulder and dragged her into the mirror, and she in turn gripped Neji by the arm. An answering twinkle in the distance, and the three vanished from the surface of the ice.

Ahead of Zabuza, mist rose from the surface of the ocean, caging the three jounin between the team that exploded from the mirror ahead of them and the vengeful jounin behind. Zabuza was fresh. The Kiri shinobi had already been in battle, were already wounded. Itachi turned away. The mist would be bloodied soon enough.

Shisui's hands were steady as he cupped a handful of chakra above Naruto's stomach. Sakura leaned in closer to get a better look.

"Shi and Go, stand guard," Itachi ordered. "Allow Juu space to work." Sakura backed up immediately, but Sasuke remained frozen, staring at Naruto with the tomoe in his eyes spinning, spinning, spinning.

Itachi regretted that this would be the first scene that his younger brother remembered with crystal clarity for the rest of his life. He crouched in front of Sasuke and reached out carefully with his chakra-sense, but there was nobody near but them. "Sasuke," he said insistently, and his brother's unfocused eyes snapped to him.

"It hurts," his otouto whispered, more surprised than anything else. His fingers clenched, bunching the fabric over his heart.

"I know," Itachi said. "You need to cease the chakra to your eyes."

Sasuke blinked, but his Sharingan whirled in his eyes still.

"Sasuke," Itachi repeated. "The battle is over." He reached up and poked his brother's forehead, like he had not done since, he realized, before the night of the Fall. The familiarity of the motion was enough to jar Sasuke out of his panic and battle haze, and his Sharingan died away with one last whirl. Itachi swallowed down both relief and pride.

Pure malice billowed up from behind him like a spark caught by wind, and he tensed, spinning around and positioning himself between Sasuke and its source. Shisui let out a surprised huff and jumped backwards. Naruto's eyes slid open slowly and locked on Shisui, considering him with slitted red eyes.

"Shit," Shisui muttered succinctly, voice a mixture of awe and apprehension.

Itachi's memory jolted with flashes of a half-remembered night of fear and the press of hatred, far more potent than even the Ichibi's chakra the day Gaara had lost control in San's forest. Naruto's lips peeled back in a snarl, and Itachi caught a glimpse of pointed fang as he sat up. In one sudden motion, the jinchuuriki reached down to the sword with a clawed hand and ripped it free.

"Hey!" Shisui snapped, lunging back forwards, but the wound was already sealing over with a bubbling miasma of raw, red chakra.

"That's super useful," Sakura said from behind him. The curiosity in her voice overshadowed her trepidation.

Shisui hummed agreement, leaning back in with careful movements as Itachi watched warily. "Okay, Naruto. Battle's over, bud, let's turn it back down, hmm?"

For a long moment, the eerie gaze swept across each of them. Then Naruto blinked, and almost immediately the red in his eyes faded to violet, then its regular brilliant blue. "Turn what down?" he slurred. "I wa'nt talking." He glanced down at the katana in his hand, regarding it bemusedly. "Uh, you gave me a sword?"

Shisui, for his part, was remarkably unfazed. "No," he said empathetically. "You just pulled that out of your kidneys, probably."

"Cool," said Naruto.

"Idiot," Sasuke snarled with particular vitriol and whirled, stalking away a few steps towards the distant mist.

"You're covered in blood," Sakura pointed out, morbidly fascinated.

Naruto looked down at his blood-soaked shirt. "Huh," he said. "That's kind of cool. You, uh, want this?" He waved the sword, and Shisui leaned back as it swayed dangerously close to his face.

Sakura wrinkled her nose. "No," she said. "Sasuke?"

Sasuke glanced over his shoulder, and Itachi could tell he did want it. Longing warred with irritation and won. "Yeah, fine," he said, and stalked over to take the hilt from his teammate gingerly.

"Still in a warzone, kids," said Shisui. He craned his neck. "Where's Team Genbu?"

"They are recovering," Itachi responded, tilting his head back towards the south. Shisui blinked at him once, slowly. Itachi frowned. "They are not in danger. Relatively speaking." His cousin continued to stare at him, exasperation bleeding into his eye. "Ah," said Itachi at last. Shisui believed that particular team required what he called a 'lighter touch,' to which Itachi freely admitted that save Sai, the team did not handle much like a traditional shinobi unit - Gaara was too volatile, Hinata too delicate. Shisui liked to apply what he called 'proximity and affirmation' and what Zabuza called 'godsdamned coddling' - but never to their faces - in order to keep them and their mental states in optimal condition, to which neither he nor Itachi could not contribute from half a kilometer away.

"Ah," Shisui agreed dryly. "I'll fetch them." He stepped into a shunshin before Itachi could respond. From an objective standpoint, Itachi was best suited to instruct Team Genbu considering his extensive undercover work in Anbu, but Shisui's easygoing nature elicited the best results from its members.

In the meantime, that left Itachi with Team Byakko. Naruto pushed himself to his feet, deliberately bumping into Sasuke, who jerked the katana at him threateningly. Sakura set her hands on her hips and glared at them both. The team, true to form, bounced back rather quickly considering Naruto would most likely have died if not for the Kyuubi, whose chakra had materialized for the first time since its sealing almost ten years ago, and also that Sasuke had just activated his genkai kekkei for the first time at age nine. In fact, Itachi seemed the one most concerned by these immediate past events.

Itachi brushed these thoughts to the side and narrowed his eyes across the ocean's surface, where the mist dissipated slowly. Zabuza's hulking silhouette emerged, trailed by the three slighter figures of Team Suzaku. All four were liberally splattered in blood, and Itachi's insides clenched at the sight of the children. War seemed the universal answer to turning a blind eye, so for the time being, Itachi quashed sentiment with practicality. "I was not expecting you to join us here," he said to Zabuza. "Did you receive new orders?"

"No," drawled Zabuza. "I just wanted an excuse to spend more time with these little hellions." He rolled his eyes. "Yes, of course I have orders." His eyes slid to Sasuke, who clutched his newly acquired katana closer to his chest. "I see we're looting bodies now."

"Actually, Naruto pulled that out of his own body," Shisui corrected. He had one arm around a woozy Gaara. Hinata now had a length of bloodied cloth tied about her arm in two places and walked unassisted next to Sai.

Zabuza eyed Naruto warily, who beamed back. "Hm," said the Swordsman grudgingly. "I guess that's all right then." The older shinobi's strange code apparently decreed, among other things, that a swordsman who lost his sword did not deserve it. Even if they were now dead.

"New orders?" Itachi prompted, stretching out his chakra-sense again. Their decimation of the backup jounin squad would likely result in one of two outcomes: Kiri conceded this section of the ocean to the Hanran for the time being, having already lost three teams including at least nine Command Corps caliber shinobi; or Kiri sent a squad of Anbu or hunter-nin to take them down while they were wounded and spent.

"You and me are temporarily reassigned to this godsforsaken corner of the ocean with this lot of heathens," said Zabuza, folding his arms and mostly succeeding in appearing disgruntled. "Tell you more when the munchkins aren't around." Sasuke aimed a glower at the man, but the redirection wasn't enough for the real target.

Shisui stilled thoughtfully, and Itachi bit back a grimace. If Shisui could be called the minder for the children, it seemed Zabuza and Itachi were to be the minders for Shisui. Itachi did look forward to working with Shisui once again, but his cousin was no doubt perceptive enough to read the situation as it was.

"You're staying?" Sakura asked with some trepidation.

Zabuza snorted, tactful enough not to look at Shisui. "Unfortunately."

Unfortunate they were not, as Kiri declined to send a kill squad after all. They made landfall at dawn on a miserably muddy island, designated as Position 25-35 by the Kiri Hanran. Itachi generally preferred to remain objective, but he disliked the island almost immediately. Inland, thin trees yawned above and draped whiplike branches down into the sludge. Even classifying the island as 'land' was difficult - the swell of the tide submerged at least half the mud and licked greedy fingers at the rest.

Even Shisui paused to stare in disgust. "Is this a covert mission?" he asked.

Itachi considered the orders he'd received. "Identities, yes; our presence here, no," he concluded.

"Good. Let's at least make this dump habitable," Zabuza growled.

"This is totally gross," Naruto said gleefully, slogging along ankle-deep. "Let's just sleep in this!"

"No," said Temari empathetically.

Four hours later, all nine children had effectively been bandaged, wrapped in their cloaks, and minus Gaara, were sleeping the sleep of the post-adrenaline crash. Instead of merely mud and trees, the island now contained mud, trees, and a series of platforms raised above the former made of the branches and trunks of the latter. They were not particularly structurally sound, and Itachi was quite sure that exsanguination by splinter would have been a legitimate concern if Gaara hadn't recovered his capacity to harness his sand to smooth out the wood before lying down in the centermost platform and simply ceasing all movement.

The children slept separated by team on three of the platforms towards the center of the cluster. There were six in their little city of platforms - all completed to the bare minimum to accommodate a prone shinobi without dropping them into the mud, each with varying sizes and heights, which would need to be improved upon once their occupants regained their energy. Itachi and Shisui shared another, for now, and on the far side, Zabuza hunched over his sword. Whether because he desired to be alone or because he wished to give the cousins some time to themselves, Itachi was not sure - the Swordsman alternated between aggressively antisocial, indifferent, and grudgingly considerate.

Some conversations were best held in the light of the moon, when all was dark and quiet but for the murmur of another's voice. In a war, however, time was precious and times of peace doubly so, and Shisui - Shisui did not soften his blows when he seized the moment, below the sun trickling through the trees above and just one meter above the mud below.

"Babysitting duty, huh?" His voice held no accusation, only neutral observation, and his back against Itachi's did not so much as tense.

Itachi concentrated on scrubbing the ever present blood from his mask. "This will likely become a strategically critical position as Hanran headquarters are moved," Itachi deflected, but that in itself was an answer and they both knew it.

Yet Shisui persisted. "I'm sure there's more critical parts of this war effort that need you."

A former Anbu captain was a valuable commodity in a war like this, where the number of chuunin outnumbered the jounin ten to one, who in turn outnumbered the Anbu ten to one. They were squad-killers, one-man-armies, and now two of them languished here, in an isolated, newly-established outpost, as much as one could be considered 'in' as the island could be called an 'outpost,' with children who, for the most part, had seen only the edges of war, and one former-jounin former-Anbu who believed his recent promotion to captain was primarily granted to maintain his cover and those of the children.

This, Itachi noted with clinical detachment, was a rather ugly assessment of his cousin. One could further describe Shisui as damaged, having lost his nerve along with an eye and the year stolen from him along with other things indescribable. At night, his breathing and sleep both stuttered. He wore his cheerfulness as a mask, when it had been genuine before - and sometimes, Itachi looked through the cracks and something dark and bitter and unfamiliar stared back.

Just a hint of that had reared its head now, but Itachi stared it down calmly as he did any opponent. "As strategically unimportant as this particular island may be, its position will allow myself and Momochi to assist other bases in launching targeted strikes," he said. He hesitated. "And perhaps the teams," he redirected.

"Absolutely not," Shisui snapped, undoubtedly seeing the trap but not caring enough to avoid it.

Itachi had assessed and accepted the circumstances already. His cousin had not. "Team Suzaku is battle-ready," he murmured. "Momochi will want his apprentice at his side, and Temari and Neji are more or less capable of keeping pace."

Shisui blew out a frustrated breath. "They're not as tough as they pretend to be," he argued, sotto voce to keep the children from waking. "Haku's fine, obviously, but the others? Keep up with him and Zabuza? Haku used to be a hunter-nin, for Kami's sake. Even Temari never made it to genin until Hatake-taichou sort of slapped a rank on the kids en masse. And how will Neji match either of them? He doesn't have the stamina."

"He is younger than them both," Itachi pointed out. "He will grow. Until then, his team will guard his back." He slid his eyes sideways, though he could only make out Shisui's spiky hair in his peripheral. "They are strong - all of them - and they have each other."

Shisui tipped his head back with a sigh, craning his neck awkwardly until it rested on Itachi's shoulder. "Here I am, demanding answers from you that I already have," he said wryly, and this time his voice was tired more than anything else.

"You care," Itachi said simply, and it was true. Uchiha fought and loved fiercely, and Shisui was no different. Itachi loved his brother more than anything else, but Shisui had grown a strange attachment to all nine of the motley pack of children.

"So do you," Shisui said softly, and turned his head towards the clusters of slumbering children. "I guess I just haven't learned how to trust them yet."

When Kombu swooped down on him, Itachi was standing out on the open water, the base at 25-35W distant enough to be just a smudge in the distance; ostensibly, he and Sasuke were on patrol. He sensed nothing and took advantage of this to enjoy the gentle roil of water beneath his feet, the rare moment of stillness to speak with his brother alone.

"The Sharingan is both a strength and a burden. Guard them and they will guard you," he said, and Sasuke nodded solemnly, but not quite enough to hide the exuberant glint in his eyes. When Itachi first awakened his Sharingan, their father had given him this speech, the words bearing in them the weight of tradition. But their father was not there, so the responsibility fell to Itachi. "He who wields the Sharingan wields the power of illusion, holds the potential to master infinite jutsu, and possesses the ability to see the future itself."

Sasuke nodded again, a little impatiently. He would have heard this before a hundred times over in Konoha before he turned five.

Here, Itachi broke with tradition. "However," he said severely, and Sasuke's head snapped towards him in surprise. "The Sharingan's illusions are not infallible, copying a jutsu does not mean you are able to perform it, and if one cannot react, seeing the future - a future - is useless. Understanding these weaknesses is the key to best utilizing the Sharingan."

Sasuke paused to absorb his words. "So we train," he said at last, turning over the katana in his hands.

Itachi allowed a slight smile onto his face. "We train," he agreed, sliding his own sword out of its sheath. "Activate your - " He cut himself off abruptly, glancing up to see the black speck winging its way towards him unerringly, and lowered his blade.

Sasuke faltered, katana half-raised uncertainly. His gaze followed Itachi's up to the sky. "That's Kombu," he said with sudden realization. "You have to go, don't you." A statement, rather than a question.

"Yuruse. Forgive me, Sasuke," Itachi said regretfully, swinging his blade up and back over his shoulder. "Again, next time."

He raised his forearm for the crow to perch upon when he approached. Kombu landed, shuffling his clawed feet and beating his wings unceremoniously, and Itachi waited patiently for his summons to regain his balance. "You have flown long and far," he noted, taking the tiny scroll from Kombu's beak.

Kombu cocked his head, regarding Itachi with intelligent eyes. "Caw," he agreed. Itachi glanced back solemnly before turning his attention to the scroll. Kombu swivelled his head towards Sasuke interestedly.

The paper contained three sets of code, arranged in grids. Itachi narrowed his eyes, parsing the messages as he read them. The first contained updates to the ever-changing battle map. The second held general orders for the base. The third detailed a raid to be undertaken by himself and Zabuza. Itachi skimmed the scroll one more time and snapped it back closed. "Thank you," he told Kombu sincerely. "I will summon another for the return message when necessary."

The crow tilted back towards Itachi. "Caw," Kombu croaked. He flapped once and vanished in a cloud of white smoke.

Zabuza, once informed, smiled slowly, baring pointed teeth. "Back at it, partner," he drawled. He stood languidly, swinging Kubikiribocho back over his shoulder with indolent grace. "When do we leave?"

Itachi spared a quick glance for Shisui, still seated in seiza on the same platform. His cousin's face betrayed no emotion. "Immediately," he answered.

"Cool," said the Swordsman, and raised his voice. "Haku! Keep an eye on things while we're gone. Gods know Konoha here can't handle it by himself."

Haku glanced up, attention taken away from the coil of wire he was untangling. "Hai," he said obediently, though it was clear he had little idea of what had just transpired.

"Hey," Shisui objected, an insulted expression wiping the blankness off his face. "I'm actually in charge of this place."

Zabuza cast an pointed stare around the clearing, which had improved little besides adding improvised roofs over the platforms. "Very impressive."

"We will return tomorrow night," Itachi informed his cousin, whose glare did not leave Zabuza's smug face as the Swordsman wrapped his face with his customary bandages.

"Is this top secret or can I know what you're doing?" Shisui asked, finally turning away from Zabuza.

Itachi paused, tilting his head thoughtfully. "I would rather inform you once we have returned," he said truthfully.

Shisui shrugged. "No problem. Have fun, kids."

"We will," Zabuza promised, hooking his mask over his face.

Itachi spared one last glance for Sasuke, lingering just within hearing distance. "Practice," he said.

"Hai," said Sasuke, straightening.

Working with Zabuza again heralded a return to the strangely comfortable partnership that they had stumbled into when Zabuza had been released from Tsunade-sama's tender mercies for the first time, four weeks after a desperate Haku had staged an ambush only to beg them for help and three weeks after he and Kakashi-taichou had raided one of Orochimaru's laboratories to find a skeletal Shisui drugged out of his mind and Zabuza with half his organs outside his body. Those first few weeks of their partnership, the Swordsman had been easily irritated, wary, and defensive, but perhaps because Itachi had not sought to treat him with anything other than professionalism, he gradually relaxed into mild abrasiveness and an easy confidence.

Despite the older man's consummate bloodlust, Itachi respected him as a shinobi. If arrogance could be defined as misplaced confidence, Zabuza had very little. He was strong enough to afford to hold himself to a code of honor and did so diligently. He was, of course, exceedingly brutal and sporadically homicidal, but every person had flaws, and Zabuza's were hardly unusual for a shinobi.

Though he could not hear Itachi's internal commentary, Zabuza's eyes slid sideways to Itachi, who had been observing him only through his peripheral vision. "What?" he said gruffly.

Itachi considered the probe, dismissed it as unimportant, and declined to answer.

The waves churned under their feet as the kilometers swept past. High above them, Nori circled lazily, a barely visible speck against the blue sky.

Itachi slowed as they approached the Hanabi-ha base, and Zabuza matched his pace. This base squatted on an island significantly larger and drier than Shisui's, and easily four times as many shinobi prowled its shores or lurked in the trees. Unlike Shisui's base, the suspicious eyes followed them even when he provided the correct passcode, drawn to their Kiri hunter-nin masks. More than one shinobi twitched, or reached for their holsters, suppressing full-body flinches at their passage.

Jounin-in-charge Nishizawa glanced up when Itachi entered the command tent, Zabuza shadowing him at his shoulder. "Ah," he said, eyes darting towards the jounin and chuunin team leaders already ringing the room. "You must be the specialists from Command."

Itachi did not feel this warranted a response, so he said nothing. Zabuza sidled in next to him, folding his arms across his chest in a simultaneously comfortable and menacing movement.

The jounin-in-charge coughed. "Right. So, er, would you like the rundown of the operation?"

Nishizawa seemed surprisingly high strung for the man in charge of this military operation. Perhaps Itachi was not promoting what Shisui called 'an encouraging atmosphere.' Granted, this man had to be at least ten years older than Itachi and he was fairly certain that Shisui had intended that particular concept to be applied to the children, but he could see how he could transpose it here. "Yes," he said.

"Ah, okay," said Nishizawa, hands unconsciously going back to the map on the table. "The, uh, the objective is to capture a Kiri outpost that will give us an avenue of access to another base, which will lead to the stronghold on Amani Island. Our target is an outpost eighty-five kilometers south-southwest of Amani. Intel suggests it has a skeleton garrison of eight chuunin teams and at least ten jounin. Three teams with long-range specialists will approach from the south." He tapped different points on the map. "Here and here, teams will engage at close range and draw out the garrison."

Here, Nishizawa glanced up, as if just remembering Itachi's presence. "And, er, you and your partner can launch a strike as soon the teams come out?"

Zabuza snorted. "Long range distraction? They won't bother looking to see what the noise is." Itachi glanced over, and the other man jerked his head towards the map. Itachi dipped a shoulder.

Zabuza strode forward, and had the trio of chuunin leaders clustered at Nishizawa's left not hastily shuffled backwards, they would have been shouldered out of the way. "New plan," he growled. "I charge the front; they'll come out. Move your long range teams back and wait outside the mist for any stragglers. Close range teams penetrate the garrison as soon as they're out."

"Mist," one jounin murmured thoughtfully from across the room. In Itachi's peripheral, she regarded Zabuza with interest.

Nishizawa tapped his fingers nervously. "What, uh, what makes you think they'll all come out?"

Zabuza crossed his arms. "They'll be terrified of me," he said, voice smug.

Nishizawa glanced at Itachi for clarification, perhaps to see if he would refute the assertion.

Itachi did not see the need to correct his partner, although he could understand why Nishizawa might have concerns. Anbu thrived under covert conditions, even in times of war. Shinobi capable of dealing massive amounts of damage in an attention-attracting manner as Zabuza professed typically did not stay in black ops, instead rotating back out to the General Forces, or more likely the Command Corps, yet both he and Zabuza wore hunter-nin masks with Kiri flak jackets and held codenames identifying them as Anbu. But that was not the only reason Zabuza had altered the plan this way. "As he says," Itachi said eventually, when the silence had stretched on too long.

"Oh," said the jounin-in charge blankly. He paused and shuffled the markers on the map. "And, er. Where will you be?"

Itachi considered the map. "I will enter the tower from the top and work my way down to locate and eliminate those who stay."

Twelve pairs of eyes swung towards Itachi incredulously. Zabuza exuded an air of amusement. "Er," hazarded Nishizawa. "By - by yourself?

Itachi paused for a moment to recalculate in case he had overestimated his own abilities. He did not believe he had. "Yes," he said simply. "Your teams will enter from the bottom. Once we have reached a rendezvous, your teams will maintain control of the outpost and I will move to assist my partner."

"Okay then," said Nishizawa, clearly dubious, but when neither he nor Zabuza faltered or commented further, turned back to the room at large. "Let's, uh, let's go over individual assignments.

The nature of their operation meant that after planning, Itachi and Zabuza had roughly one hour to eat after the planning session had concluded before they would have to move into position.

Zabuza eyed the row of vats bubbling in the cooking tent perched precariously between two tall trees with a combination of curiosity and distaste. "You eating that slop?"

Itachi did not consider himself a particularly picky eater. However, even the rock-solid, dust-dry field rations did not consist of a watery soup with flakes of charred garlic and undercooked potatoes. Additionally, choosing to eat the camp meal meant he would have to pass through the rows of wary shinobi lining the walls of the tent. Normally, Itachi would not so much as twitch at the thought of dining amidst the hostility, but today he was fresh from the comfortable atmosphere of Shisui's camp and Sasuke's company and on the brink of an operation that promised copious amounts of violence and blood.

He drifted away from the tent, and perhaps sensing his mood, Zabuza did not comment as he followed him to the edge of the trees. Instead, he reached into the pocket of his flak jacket and tossed something small at Itachi, who caught it instinctively. The Swordsman flicked the mask up to his nose and tugged down the bandages swathing his mouth. "What's on your mind?" he asked gruffly

Itachi turned the ration bar over in his hands and opened it. "You think the outpost is a trap," he said without accusation.

Zabuza's eyes were hidden beneath the mask, but Itachi felt the older man regarding him with no small amusement. "Yeah? So do you."

True. "You did not mention that during the briefing," he noted, tilting his mask up slightly so he could eat.

Zabuza bared his teeth in a sharklike grin. "You didn't either," he pointed out. "Aren't you Konoha types all about sharing?"

"Transparency is encouraged when one trusts one's comrades," Itachi said neutrally.

Zabuza leaned back. "Hn. So you agree that not everyone in there's as trustworthy as me."

There was a joke in there somewhere, though Zabuza typically enjoyed and employed a more straightforward type of humor. "A secret is best kept when there are fewer to tell it," he said instead. "You and I are best equipped to deal with a potential trap."

Zabuza snorted. "The two of us are best for everything except medic and cannon fodder, kid."

Itachi knew he reminded Zabuza of Haku, who was only three years younger than Itachi himself and had fought at his side for years the way Itachi did now, albeit with a different arrangement. However, the war and the horrors Haku had witnessed or bourne at a young age had not yet stripped away his innocence the way it had Itachi's, and Zabuza most definitely did not try to train Itachi. Even still, the older shinobi seemed not to notice his slip.

Itachi let the silence stand and finished the ration bar. Zabuza unsheathed his katana and removed a whetstone from his pouch, letting it rasp over the edge of his blade. Zabuza's silent killing techniques with even a regular katana were unparalleled, and his ability to inspire fear as good as a genjutsu, so while they still concealed their identities, he generally kept Kubikiribocho's blade sealed into its hilt.

Time ticked inexorably on. A harried chuunin stuck his head out of the command tent and shouted, "Operation Bluebird, five minutes!"

Itachi rose with Zabuza as the older man slid his katana back into its sheath with a hiss. Zabuza stretched leisurely, tugging his bandages back up and his mask back down. "Let's go," he growled.

The target outpost perched atop a rocky buff, a hundred meters up from the waves that lapped at the base of the island. Itachi could not see the other teams from his position, only Nishizawa and Zabuza beside him. Nori perched on his shoulder, ruffling her feathers fussily.

"Once the operation starts, I'll, er, signal you when the garrison clears out as much as they will," said Nishizawa, squinting off in the direction of one of the other teams, who included the only sensor-nin for the operation, a chakra sensor of middling power. "You have - ten?" He glanced at Itachi.

"Ten is sufficient," Itachi agreed placidly.

"Ten minutes before I signal the rest of the teams," finished Nishizawa. "Er, Hana-An-031? Whenever you're ready."

"I'm ready," said Zabuza with malicious cheerfulness. His eyes slid over to Itachi. "Don't take too long," he added. He turned purposefully and charged.

Nishizawa huffed out a surprised breath at his abrupt departure. "He's, uh, he's a kenjutsu specialist, he said?"

Broadly speaking, that was correct, but that was not the question Nishizawa was really asking. "My partner is skilled in a variety of techniques," Itachi answered instead, watching as the ocean swelled in front of Zabuza. A massive water dragon reared out of the waves and slammed into the foremost tower, sending stone and water flying as it spent itself against the tower wall.

"Oh," said Nishizawa faintly. "That - that'll get their attention."

"I will leave now," Itachi announced. Nori croaked and hopped over to Nishizawa's shoulder, who flinched and nearly went for a kunai. "Inform Nori when you have the signal."

"Right," said the jounin, rolling his eyes to the side to stare at the crow without moving the rest of his body.

Itachi slipped across the water as another of Zabuza's jutsu battered the outpost. One after the other, tiny black figures swarmed from its walls and dropped over the side of the cliff to meet Zabuza's charge. The ocean roiled beneath them as tendrils of waters erupted to combat Zabuza's second dragon. Zabuza's chakra swelled and mist seeped upwards from the surface of the water, and soon all the combatants were lost to sight.

Itachi did not want to risk detection with undue chakra expulsion, even with Zabuza's chakra-laden mist obscuring the battlefield, so he ran atop the waves to the side of the island rather than shunshin. He paused at the base of the cliff, pressed against the rock face as unobtrusively as was feasible, and waited.

Two more chakra signatures flared as they dropped into the mist. The clash of metal on metal echoed across the water, and then Itachi's eyes caught a black shape winging into the air.

He reached out with his chakra-sense. His senses were not attuned enough to determine how many remained in the outpost, and there seemed to be a chakra dampener in effect, but he suspected there were still at least three full teams inside, and likely as many as five. He straightened and leapt up onto the rock face, sprinting up the side even as it transitioned from natural stone into the rough-hewn wall of the guard tower. He flowed over the top and unsheathed his katana in one movement, Sharingan spinning to life in his eyes.

Three shinobi stood guard, two with swords ready and one with kunai and wire; Itachi forestalled all their attacks by snaring them in a genjutsu.

The mind of the first shinobi - the oldest, with kunai already brandished - bent under his attack, and both the kunai and the coil of wire dropped from nerveless fingers. Itachi strode forward unhurriedly as the man crumbled to the ground, eyes open and unseeing. The second, a kunoichi, snarled, trembling head to toe with her sword gripped tightly in both hands as she fought to break free. Itachi brought his katana up and stabbed her through the chest with one quick, short thrust.

She choked, the breath stuttering in her lungs, and Itachi reached up to grip her shoulder as he slid his blade back out. He caught her as she fell backwards, lowered her the rest of the way to the roof. Her eyes drifted to meet his, hatred and fear and confusion in equal parts until those too faded as her life did.

Killing intent bubbled into the air as the last shinobi threw off the remaining tendrils of genjutsu. He tracked Itachi as he stood, eyes lingering briefly on his fallen teammates. "I'll kill you," he promised, sweeping his katana up.

Itachi did not justify that with a response. Instead, he darted forward, sending the blade in front of himself with lightning speed. Fall of the Mourning Dove . His katana deflected off the other shinobi's, and he whirled in a quick step and one-two flick-slash. Dawn Sparrow's Cry.

The other shinobi parried both easily, flowing easily into a waist-height slash at Itachi that he recognized from one of the more difficult styles Kiri favored - Hunt of the Northern Tiger . He flickered out of the way, but even with the foresight granted by his doujutsu Itachi had no intention of constraining the fight to kenjutsu. This close, the other man could not miss the Sharingan whirling lazily as Itachi glanced up from beneath the mask.

The other man's eyes widened in recognition as he looked him full in the eyes. "Uchiha Ita - "

Itachi's genjutsu caught hold of him, freezing his limbs and giving Itachi the opportunity to slide his blade up into the shinobi's ribcage. The man collapsed with a muted thump.

Itachi withdrew his blade and scrutinized the rest of the outpost roof. The wind blew in from the ocean, ruffling the clothing on the three crumpled bodies littering the roof. He sensed no one else near him.

The door to the stairwell hung ajar. He stepped towards it, then paused. A seal pulsed on the wall above the stairs, and he examined it carefully. Alarm seal? Trap seal? Itachi had no great experience with seals; as far as he knew, very few in Hanabi-ha were proficient enough to recognize anything other than a summoning seal or explosive seal besides Kakashi-taichou. With other seals, the structure and design varied widely, such that Itachi could only identify the seals he himself had used in the past, which had been created by an actual seal practitioner.

He tilted his head to consider the seal from a different angle. Ah. He recognized this one. He had seen it before, in a base far to the north. He gathered fire chakra in one gloved hand and touched it to the seal. The wall cracked beneath his touch, the edges of the seal itself flickering and burning away to ash. He stretched out with his chakra-sense, and this time, he could sense the chakra signatures of the Kiri teams within.

To borrow one of Zabuza's favored statements, it was time to hunt. He flicked the blood off his blade and proceeded down the stairs. The narrow hallways would hamper the swing of his sword, so he sheathed it back over his shoulder. He did not need a blade.

A flash of killing intent betrayed his first assailant, lunging out of a doorway with a shout. Itachi leaned backwards to avoid the tanto swinging for his face, batted aside the flat of the blade with one hand in a movement that must have appeared careless, and caught him in a genjutsu of licking flames and cold steel and innumerous figures stalking him from the shadows. Itachi stepped around the man, struck motionless and dumb with his blade hanging by his side, and walked onwards. Behind him, no more than three paces later, he heard the soft thud and clatter as the body hit the ground.

He opened the next door he encountered. Small and barren, it boasted a narrow window overlooking the sea. Itachi ventured over, glancing down at the heavy mist that carpeted the waves, blocking them from view. He moved on. In the hallway, the Sharingan revealed to him the glow of another seal, which faded from view when he deactivated the doujutsu.

He could sense muffled chakra signatures in the floors below him still; in conjunction with its positioning, he reasoned it could not be for privacy - more likely a trap seal. He formed a clone and retreated back down the hallway as it advanced, allowing the Sharingan to swirl in his eyes once again. He turned back into the room and closed the door. No sooner had it clicked shut than a concussive blast tore down the hallway, rattling the door. After a moment, Itachi opened it and proceeded through the smoke once again.

A gaping hole yawned where the seal had been, the walls of either side cratered, and the ceiling dripped rock and dust. Itachi paused, straining his eyes into the particle-choked air, but saw nothing. He leapt over the hole and continued down the hallway. The silence settled heavily but for the whistle of wind through the window slots, unbroken by his noiseless footsteps.

He opened three more doors and found two storage rooms and a bathroom before reaching the opposite stairwell. Three steps down, the air changed, and he twisted sharply out of the way as an oversized kunai buried itself into the wall next to his head.

Clawed hands slammed out of the stone behind him, gripping him fast and immobilizing his limbs as they pulled him into the wall. He blinked and flipped the genjutsu on its original wielder, drawing out a prolonged scream from the kunoichi as the illusionary rock crushed her legs; in the same moment, he substituted a clone that splashed to the floor as the foremost shinobi stabbed it in the neck. He alighted behind the third shinobi, whose douton went wide as he jerked in surprise. A giant boulder crashed into the opposite wall, flushing a fourth shinobi out from behind it.

Suiton: Mizurappa. Itachi inhaled and blasted the entire team backwards, the burst of water hammering them relentlessly into the stairwell. It left behind only the drip of water and the blood rushing in his ears. He stepped forward, gathering a genjutsu behind his eyes. Two bodies lay broken on the stairs - the doton and genjutsu wielders.

A figure lunged through the wall beside him as if it were merely liquid, and Itachi dodged a kunai blade the length of his arm. He snagged the shinobi by the wrist as he flew past and slammed him into the opposite wall, squeezing until he was forced to drop the blade. The other man snarled, flipping a kunai out of his holster and hurling it underhanded at Itachi, who let go and stepped back to avoid it.

The shinobi drew a kunai in either hand and lunged. At the same time, the fourth shinobi materialized out of a shunshin at his back, already swinging a katana with the intent to behead him. Itachi unleashed his genjutsu, potent from the time and chakra spent building it, and both froze in their tracks as Itachi fueled a false battle that would end in both of their deaths. He skirted them both and continued down the hallway. By his estimate, the Hanabi-ha teams would commence their approach in a little under four minutes, and if there was a trap to be sprung, Itachi needed to be present in order to neutralize it.

He tripped two more trap seals - one that launched a flurry of shuriken and senbon, another that turned the floor to molten lava - and cleared the abandoned barracks before descending the stairs once more.

Two minutes. Itachi wove another genjutsu as he turned into the mess hall, casting it out before him like a net.

Immediately, he leapt up onto the ceiling to avoid the jets of water crashing to the floor from the side, piling unmoored tables against the far wall, and ran upside down as a barrage of kunai peppered his footsteps. He reached for his katana and leapt, corkscrewing down on a kunoichi who unsheathed her sword and slashed in one fluid movement. Itachi parried, bearing down on her, but her partner flashed behind him with his own blade upraised and he was forced to jump clear.

His eyes flickered to the side and he had half a second to substitute a clone, which was promptly buried under a douton slamming a hail of boulders into the ground. He created three more clones and slipped away from the battle to the rafters.

Itachi observed the team intently. The ninjutsu specialist coordinated fluidly with the kenjutsu specialists, spitting bullets of water when Itachi's clones evaded them. One hit a clone, pinning it to the ground, and a kunai from the fourth shinobi dispelled it before Itachi's second clone pounced, scoring him from sternum to hip. As he watched, a third swordsman vaulted through the window from the kitchen, beheading the clone.

Five shinobi. Not a squad of four - two jounin trios? Itachi's eyes darted to the side.

A kunoichi leered back at him, eyes half-hidden under kelp-green bangs. "Hello, traitor," she purred, and five bunshin bubbled into existence, surrounding him. " Dance of the Moonlight Crane ."

Itachi dropped from the rafters, but the bunshin followed, diving after him with blades drawn. He landed on a table in a crouch, willing two more clones into existence, and the three scattered as the kunoichi's clones landed among them in a flurry of steel.

Itachi blocked one blade with his own, but his riposte was batted aside by a second before it touched the clone. Movement flashed in the corner of his eye, and he leapt straight up as spikes of rock lanced up from the floor, then to the side as a handful of senbon hissed past. He alighted in the rafters and spat a Suiton: Sugadan . The ninjutsu user dodged, but one of the swordsman was slammed into the wall with a cry.

The green-haired kunoichi lunged over a table, cold intent in the glint of her eyes, and Itachi substituted himself across the room, burying his blade in the hapless long-rage specialist's back.

"Toguta!" cried the first swordswoman, drawing a kunai in her free hand and charging. The man choked and slid off his katana, and Itachi stepped into a short-range shunshin to avoid her.

The green-haired kunoichi's clones pounced on him in a flash, and he caught their blades on his. A sinkhole opened beneath him; Itachi leapt backwards and inhaled involuntarily as he plunged directly into a sphere of water that weighed his limbs and constricted his lungs. The kunoichi landed next to the clone that had captured him. "Gotcha," she whispered. Itachi felt the last of his clones dispel dispassionately.

The room, uniform and uncluttered at his first entry, bore the scars of their battle. Water puddled and dripped along the cracked floor. Blades protruded from broken rafters, and one shinobi knelt over the one Itachi had wounded. The first swordswoman cradled the head of the one he had killed in her lap.

Itachi watched passively beneath lidded eyes as the tallest swordsman stepped forward, twirling the hilt of his sword easily in one hand. Rage and malice festered in his eyes as he glanced around the room at his fallen teammates, and the green-haired kunoichi stepped back to give him room. "You're finished," the shinobi sneered. With a sharp thrust, he slammed his blade into the water prison, through bone and flesh alike into Itachi's chest.

"No," said Itachi, and opened his eyes, stepping out of his genjutsu.

The water vanished, the ceiling where the kunai had been embedded was smooth and unblemished. The first three shinobi stood frozen in their ambush positions, one clutching a wound that existed only in his mind; the fourth lay prone on the ground - dead. When he reached out, he sensed the chakra of the fifth in the far corner of the room, and the sixth yet in the kitchen. He glanced around, and each of the Kiri-nin met his eyes with horror in theirs.

One minute. "Let us begin," he said.

Jounin Chiaki, identification Hana-Shi-057, leader of the three incursion teams, skidded into the doorway and paused. Itachi deactivated his Sharingan at her approach and glanced up, sliding his katana out of the sixth shinobi, the green-haired kunoichi. He spared a quick look around at the rest of the room. Most of the tables had been shoved up against the edges of the room, but some still sat in neat rows. Bodies lay sprawled as if tossed by a child who no longer wanted to play, some in pools of blood and some not. Only a little water puddled in the center of the room; the ninjutsu user who had survived his genjutsu had spent too much chakra for an effective defense.

She eyed the room and then Itachi himself, standing unbloodied at the center of the carnage. "We've secured the base, uh, sir - ? Eight hostiles neutralized."

Itachi understood her confusion. He had identified himself as an operative rather than a captain, and operatives held an ambiguous position in the Hanabi-ha hierarchy - all Anbu ranked above the Guntai, and all captains ranked above the Shirei-bu, but depending on the shinobi, Anbu operatives could rank either above or below a jounin. He nodded. "Fourteen hostiles neutralized. Upper floors should be clear, but proceed with caution."

Eight neutralized, and no sign of a trap.

"Chiaki," he said, when she turned to go. "What of the battle outside?"

She hesitated. "We can't really tell what's going on inside the mist," she said. "Long range teams have eliminated a total of three shinobi when they left the mist and wounded another two who reentered."

"Understood," said Itachi, and Chiaki nodded awkwardly before vanishing into the hallway.

Where was the trap? Itachi stepped over the fallen shinobi and entered the hallway, where he passed the rest of Chiaki's team on his way to the next set of stairs. Indeed, the bottom floor was empty as the second Hanabi-ha team prowled up the stairs as he descended.

Three floors, and Itachi had yet to find the command center. In the ground floor hallway he encountered a training room, a weapons and supply room, another bathroom, and a front-facing sentry room, in which clustered the third incursion team, watching the mist intently.

He turned back out into the hallway and activated his Sharingan again for a closer examination, pacing back down towards the stairs. He paused outside the training room, his attention caught by a slight glow that vanished when he stopped. If he tilted his head just a little - there. A flicker of chakra, nearly hidden. Even a chakra-muting seal emitted chakra when active.

He stepped forward, pacing across the empty room until he reached the edge of the seal, then crouched and reached out. With a touch of chakra, he peeled it back to reveal a trapdoor and the much larger chakra lurking inside. From down the hall and the floors above, he sensed the alarmed agitation of the other teams' chakra as he dropped inside.

Explosive tags liberally wallpapered the covert command room, maps had been hastily torn from the walls and scattered across the floor, and in the center of the room, a Kiri shinobi bared his teeth at Itachi over hands already folded into the snake seal. "Boom, motherfucker," he snarled, and his chakra lit the room in a concussive blast, and even as Itachi flinched backwards, he could feel his very flesh ripping apart as the building collapsed in on top of them -

He tore himself out of the genjutsu, chest heaving as he struggled to regain his composure. In front of him, the Kiri shinobi's face froze in the rictus of a grimace, hands ready to activate the seal but his chakra dormant. Itachi walked forward, bearing down harder on the man's mind with his genjutsu. Carefully, he reached forward and beheaded him in one quick slash. The head fell one way, the body the other. With a silent sigh, he let his doujutsu fade once more.

"Good gods," breathed Chiaki behind him. Itachi turned to see her and her team crowding the opening in the ceiling. "That many explosive tags could have dropped the entire island into the sea."

Itachi nodded once in agreement, the vision of the future that could have been still lurking at the forefront of his mind.

"Suicide attack," said Chiaki's second grimly. "We can clean this up, sir."

"Go ahead," said Chiaki, casting one last glance into the room before leaning back. Her three team members dropped down, giving Itachi a wide berth as he slipped past them to leap out.

He caught up with Chiaki in the hallway, and she paused, half-turning. "I intend to assist my partner," he informed her.

The jounin nodded. "We have the base," she said. "I'll signal Nishizawa and let him know."

Itachi strode down the hallway, past the team still huddled in the sentry room, and walked straight out of the base. The wind buffeted him as he stepped foot outside, ruffling the dry, flattened grass as he stepped to the edge of the cliff. He paused for a moment, glancing over his shoulder, and caught sight of the Hanabi-ha teams perched on the outpost roof, watching, and another moving on the far side of the base.

He faced forward again, narrowing his eyes as he scrutinized the base of the cliff. Itachi crouched and leaped off the edge, flaring his chakra once sharply as he plummeted into the thick bank of mist coiled below.

Itachi did not bother to activate his Sharingan. It could not penetrate this mist, so there was no use. He landed with a light splash, having misjudged the distance to the surface with the lack of visibility, and immediately ghosted away from the site of impact. Zabuza's dominion was one of slow, deliberate movements, an unnaturally muffled silence, and oppressive, omniscient menace. Itachi slid the hilt of his sword into a backhanded grip and prowled forward.

His eyes darted to the side as they caught movement, and he forced himself not to tense as a figure loomed out of the mist. Zabuza's posture oozed satisfaction, and the blade of his katana dripped blood. "You're late, he growled, and his voice echoed. If he had not been standing in front of Itachi, he would have been hard-pressed to locate the source. "There are only two little rabbits left."

Itachi tilted his head apologetically. "You have this well in hand," he noted. "You do not need my assistance. Finish toying with your prey and end this."

Zabuza snorted and his grip on the mist loosened. "Meh. I was getting bored anyways. You can get one," he said magnanimously, and vanished into the thinning mist.

Itachi did not particularly care to 'get' one, but it seemed the fastest way to end this mission. He raised his katana grimly.

True to his word, he and Zabuza reached the welcoming muddy embrace of the base at 25-35W by the time the first stars bloomed in the infinite black. Gaara met them some forty meters out from the shore, regarding them birdlike with a tilted head. Itachi was not quite sure what the appropriate response here was, but fortunately, Zabuza had no such reservations.

"Hey, midget," he said gruffly. "Anyone else up?"

A pause. Gaara dipped his head in a slight nod.

"Shisui?" Another nod. "Anyone else?" He shook his head. "Cool," said Zabuza. "I'm beat. Have fun out here." He sauntered towards the island.

Itachi hesitated and reached out to pat Gaara's hair carefully before following the Swordsman.

Shisui did not rise at their approach, but he did set down the oiled cloth he'd been running over the blade of his tanto. "Good mission?"

Zabuza thumped down on his platform, yanking the mask off his face. "Yeah," he grunted, hooking it onto his belt. "Short and broody here foiled a suicide bomber."

Shisui coughed a surprised laugh, and Itachi frowned, reaching up to remove his own mask. "My height is within typical parameters for my age," he pointed out. "Yours is the abnormal one."

"Brat," Zabuza snapped halfheartedly.

"Settle down, children," said Shisui, eye twinkling gleefully. "Don't make me separate you."

Zabuza rolled his eyes. "Got anything to eat? That camp had jack shit."

"That camp had a serviceable soup containing salted pork and potatoes," Itachi corrected, though he had declined it as well.

"And charcoal," Zabuza muttered.

Shisui jerked his chin towards one of the other platforms, which now boasted three walls and a slanted roof. "Food supplies in there," he said. "Think the kids might have left some fish stew in the pot, but who knows? Naruto eats like a wolf in winter."

"That brat," Zabuza complained without venom, but slid off towards the supply platform anyways.

Wearily, Itachi raised his eyes to Shisui's, which reflected wry understanding back at him before movement caught his attention from the edge of his vision. "Ohaiyo, Sasuke," Itachi said quietly, watching his brother struggle upright.

"Aniki," Sasuke greeted, voice rough with sleep. "You're back."

"Aa," Itachi agreed. "The mission is over."

"I trained," Sasuke offered. "Shisui-nii helped me with the Sharingan." He paused hopefully. "Can I show you?"

Itachi hesitated. "Now?"

"Let your brother rest, Sasuke-kun," Shisui cut in kindly, and Sasuke's shoulders slumped.

"No, I don't mind," Itachi said, suddenly desperate for some sense of peace after the bloodshed of the past few days.

Shisui frowned up at him as he rose. "You ran I don't know how far after fighting I don't know how long and spending who knows how much chakra." He stopped and shook his head. "Just be careful," he said, instead of dissuading him.

Itachi widened his eyes slightly. "Of course," he said with just enough injury that Shisui rolled his visible eye. "Come, Sasuke."

Sasuke sprang up eagerly, tripping over Naruto in his haste, who rolled over and said something like, "Mushroom jungle buys midautumn turtle more sake thatch," before letting out a surprisingly quiet burp. Sasuke flushed, and Itachi strongly suspected he would have kicked his teammate if Itachi had not been present.

Itachi turned and led the way back out onto the water, stopping roughly halfway between the camp and where Gaara stood sentry, and faced his brother. "Show me what you have learned," he invited, and ignited the chakra to awaken his Sharingan.

An answering glow from Sasuke's eyes mirrored his, and he watched as his brother palmed a kunai. He charged, and Itachi let him come. He slipped to the side to avoid his first strike, but that too Sasuke could see and he twisted in a low kick meant to knock Itachi's legs from under him.

Of course, using the same doujutsu meant that Itachi could see the movements Sasuke intended to make as much as if not more than his brother could see his. This turned the spar into a choreographed dance, where each knew what the other would do some three to four moves in advance.

Sasuke's movements were fluid as he dodged Itachi's jab and retaliated with a jab - comfortable already with the foresight granted by the Sharingan. Itachi spared a moment for the fond pride that warmed his chest and then conspired to disturb his otouto's footing: he changed his mind.

The first time Sasuke stumbled, his brow furrowed. The second time, he lunged past Itachi, who had aborted a sidestep halfway instead of completing the step and parrying Sasuke's strike as he had originally intended. His eyes widened and then narrowed, and the tomoe in his eyes spun wildly as he forwent his next attack to crouch some four meters away from Itachi, watching him warily.

"The Sharingan shows you one future," said Itachi, allowing him the respite as he himself straightened. "To trust in it unconditionally is irresponsible and unwise."

Sasuke frowned thoughtfully and lunged in a burst of speed that Itachi's Sharingan had not predicted. He allowed himself a small smile - his brother was learning. The spar morphed into game of chess, an analysis of the could-be futures where either did not fight fully in the present but in the possibilities.

When Itachi felt the pull on his chakra reserves, he changed course abruptly and pulled back from the fight, raising his hand to call the fight to a stop. "Yuruse, Sasuke," he said, as his brother skidded to a halt, the bright glint in his eyes dimming slightly. "I cannot spare any more chakra."

Itachi's heart twisted as Sasuke's face fell, but his brother slid his kunai back into its holster. "I understand," he said. "Thank you for training with me, Aniki."

"Not at all," said Itachi. He turned back towards the camp, but Sasuke did not follow. He paused.

Sasuke jerked a thumb out across the water, where Gaara still stood motionless. "I'm going to go keep Gaara company," he said. "It's not really fair that he does all the guard rotations just 'cause he doesn't sleep."

"Good idea," said Itachi, slightly surprised despite himself. On impulse, he stretched out a hand and tangled it in Sasuke's hair just briefly before he left. "I will see you later."

Though Zabuza was still crashing around the food supplies remarkably quietly, Shisui had since retreated to one of the platforms clearly designated as sleeping quarters. Reminiscent of the quarters they had shared with Kakashi-taichou in Tetsu, the platform now boasted two raised racks that could comfortably hold two each. Shisui, wrapped in his sleeping bag, had laid claim to one on the top row. He had carried in Itachi's pack as well, and that sat neatly on the rack next to him.

Itachi removed his sandals before joining him, spreading his own sleeping bag to his cousin's steady breaths. He took pains to do so quietly, but Shisui rolled over nonetheless and cracked open his eye. "I did not mean to disturb you," Itachi said apologetically.

"Didn't," countered Shisui, his voice only a little sleep-rough. He watched Itachi's preparations through a slitted eye. "He's been waiting for you to do that," he informed Itachi.

Itachi slid himself into the folds of his sleeping bag. "To train him in the Sharingan?" he queried.

Shisui snorted. "No. Yeah. Sure."

Itachi blinked, but his cousin did not clarify, as was his wont.

He heaved a sigh. "These kids really look up to you, Itachi-kun," he said instead, the words half-slurred.

"I am aware," Itachi said blankly.

Shisui shook his head at him ruefully, and Itachi again felt the impression that he had missed his cousin's point. "Here. Got you something," he said, and fished something out of the blankets around him.

Itachi frowned at his outstretched hand and did not move. "Where did you put that?"

"Nowhere gross, you punk," Shisui grumbled. "C'mon take it."

Itachi proffered his hand obediently. "What is it?" he asked, examining it cautiously.

"Not much," said Shisui, rolling onto his back and draping an arm over his eyes. "I know you hate getting weapons and stuff on your birthday, so - happy sweet sixteen."

Itachi closed his fingers around it carefully, cradling its warmth in his hand. "Shisui," Itachi said seriously, and his cousin tilted his head to glance at him beneath heavy lids. "Thank you."


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Naruto Might Have The Worst Luck In The History Of Luck

But there's no story without a struggle, amirite?

Notes: This chapter includes some more graphic scenes, including physical torture and waterboarding.

* * *

MISSION REPORT D-113

Operative Cat-15 reports all well with all targets and allies. Nutrition has improved by instructing targets and allies in acquisition of resources, including: trapping, foraging, and pickpocketing. Instruction in concealment in urban and uninhabited environments progressing well. New temporary base of operations established; all targets and allies instructed on course of action in event of attack.

Course of action: Continue to evade all pursuers if possible, evaluate and monitor current abilities of all targets and allies, and provide critique and techniques to improve as necessary, including: techniques for acquiring food covertly or in an uninhabited environment; concealment in urban and uninhabited environments; defensive and offensive maneuvers.

Contact made with enemy combatants, origin: Konohagakure. Operative Cat-15 eliminated all covertly without sustaining injury to self, targets, or allies. Imminent departure of Operative Cat-15 may prove necessary to draw away potential pursuers and/or backup team.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

* * *

Naruto had a problem. Okay, it wasn't really a problem, more like a change. He could call it a new roommate, really.

Except, you know, one without a body. One that he imagined kind of growled a little bit and lurked at the back of his mind and made him angry sometimes, like angry Gaara angry but Itachi-sensei called it Ichibi. But Gaara'd had the Ichibi since he was born, and Naruto's only had his angry voice since like, two weeks ago and he'd only heard - or felt, really - the one time. And yeah, Itachi-sensei said the Ichibi was actually like a demon, not a sickness or something, and that Naruto had one too called Kyuubi, but he wasn't supposed to talk about it.

And one time in San's forest Kakashi-taichou had said that his parents - Naruto's parents! - had made him eat the demon fox because the demon fox had wanted to eat Konoha. Kakashi-taichou was scary and kind of shifty in general and Naruto didn't really know much about the guy but he didn't really think the captain would lie to him because, like, he was the captain. Plus he knew Naruto's parents! He wouldn't tell him who they were even though Naruto really, really wanted to know because it was super secret and dangerous and Naruto wasn't strong enough to know yet even though he and Sakura-chan and Sasuke had totally taken down an actual jounin that one time mostly by themselves.

So anyways Naruto guessed he'd had this Kyuubi thing since he was a baby too but it was maybe it was sleeping all the time before and now it was only mostly sleeping. But now he had this feeling of not being alone, which was kind of nice but totally weird because weren't you supposed to be the only one in your head?

"Hey!" Sakura-chan shoved him, sending him wobbling across the ocean surface. "Were you paying attention at all?" she demanded.

Naruto's eyes darted between her and Sasuke, who was scowling again under the metal crap covering half his face, that bastard. "Yes?" he hazarded.

Sakura-chan crossed her arms kind of like how Zabuza-sensei did but not as scary because she was way shorter than him. "Really," she said.

Ah crap. She totally didn't believe him. "We were talking about - " he glanced around wildly for any idea of what she could have been saying, " - the mission?"

Sasuke snorted, and Naruto shot him a glare as best he could without actually moving his head.

Sakura-chan took a deep breath and her ears turned a little red the way they did when she was mad but trying to act like she wasn't. "Yes," she said. "What about the mission?"

Naruto wracked - wracked, what a weird word - his brains, but nothing. He slumped. She was totally going to lecture. "Sakura-chan," he whined. "It was taking too long! We're just picking up supplies!"

Sakura-chan actually vibrated with anger. "This is our first solo mission!" she hissed. "The other teams both did it successfully. We can't screw up. How would we ever face everyone else?"

"If we screw up, we'll probably be dead, so we won't have to face them," Sasuke inserted helpfully. His voice was muffled under the rebreather Itachi-sensei had given him to disguise his face when they first started running supply missions. Naruto didn't think he needed a reason to talk even less, but Sasuke insisted it was part of disguise.

"Karasu-sensei would totally kill you if you died," Naruto said speculatively, because they - pretty much him and Temari-nee - had decided to name Itachi-sensei after the crows he could apparently summon that pretty much only Sasuke had ever seen and was kind of stuck up about and who also didn't like the nickname that much but was stuck with it because that made Naruto like it more and also he didn't have a better codename thought up. Also, the 'kill him' bit was true. Itachi-sensei would be pissed . Like glare disapprovingly pissed, because Itachi-sensei kind of didn't emote and Naruto definitely never saw him look angry. Just, like mildly disappointed.

"That doesn't even make sense, idiot," Sasuke said dismissively, and Naruto bristled. Who was he calling idiot? Idiot.

"Boys," Sakura-chan said loudly before he could retort. "The mission."

Naruto was about to sigh really loudly but then remembered that Sakura-chan was still kind of pissed.

"Yeah, we got it," Sasuke grunted.

"We don't have anyone with the right doujutsu - " Sakura-chan began.

Sasuke stiffened and Naruto cackled. "Hey," he snapped.

Sakura-chan shrugged unrepentantly. "Sorry, Sasuke," she said. "S'not like you can use that outside battle."

Sasuke crossed his arms. "Well, we don't have the right jinchuuriki either," he snipped.

Naruto's jaw dropped. He wasn't even part of that argument! "I can't help it!" he complained. Stupid Gaara with all that stupid sand under the ocean. What did the Kyuubi thing ever given him, besides Sasuke's sword?

"The point," Sakura-chan bulldozed on, "is we don't have a way to tell if someone's sneaking up on us like the other teams do, so we have to be extra vigilant."

Naruto screwed up his face. "Why do we gotta be extra villainous?"

"Vigilant," corrected Sakura-chan. "Extra careful and quiet so we can see or hear if anyone tries to attack us."

"Let's go." Sasuke fidgeted with the hilt of his sword impatiently. He didn't have a sheath for it so he kind of just used an extra belt to swing it behind him at his waist. Personally, Naruto thought that was a stupid idea because it could slice his butt open if he fell backwards or sat on it or something, but that was Sasuke's problem and Naruto would probably just laugh at him if that happened. "Stick to codenames from here on out. I'll take point, Go, take rear. Roku - " He eyed Naruto critically, and Naruto bristled. " - try not to be too loud." He turned and took off, sprinting flat out across the waves, and Naruto rushed to follow.

"I can be quiet when I want," Naruto muttered mutinously. He plucked at the bandages swathing the bottom half of his face. He thought it was a stupid disguise, though not as stupid as Sasuke's; these bandages that made him look a little like Zabuza-baka-sensei and the hair dye that made his hair like Gaara's but more brown, but Itachi-sensei said all the strong shinobi would recognize the marks of the Kyuubi on his face so now he had to wear them all the time. At least he didn't have to bleach or cut his hair, though, like Sakura-chan and Sasuke both did. Sakura-chan was lucky - she and Haku were the only ones who didn't have to hide any of their faces.

Apparently people in Kiri knew Haku was always with Zabuza-sensei, but for some reason nobody seemed to recognize him, and nobody was really trying to kill Sakura-chan other than the ones who wanted all of them dead anyways.

Most of the rest of them got by with a little waterproof makeup, or sunglasses in Neji and Hinata-chan's case. Naruto wished they could wear their Yorozoku masks, but Shisui-sensei said that could make people think they were Anbu and then Kiri might send actual Anbu to kill them and Naruto was strong but he wasn't stupid - he knew they at least needed Gaara or Haku to try and take on an Anbu. Or Sai, he guessed, since Sai used to be an Anbu trainee so he was probably pretty good.

But Naruto was super strong now! He was learning so much stuff they didn't teach at the Academy, because even though he'd been there like four whole months or something all they did was teach stuff in books and how to throw a kunai or throw a punch or something. He could do real ninja things like taijutsu and super secret forbidden ninjutsu and walking on water! Running on water! Even though that last bit took him like half a year to get really good at, which Zabuza-sensei said was because his chakra control was 'ah-troh-shus,' which Shisui-sensei said meant it 'needed work.'

The important part was that he could do it, which meant that Team Byakko was in business! Naruto loved the wind rushing through his hair, battering the upper part of his face that didn't have the bandages. The sunlight glinted off the water, and he probably would have been blinded if he hadn't squinted his eyes a little like Gaara did when he was tired but couldn't sleep because Gaara never slept because if he did sleep then the demon would take over his body and literally nobody wanted that.

Ahead of him, Sasuke veered off a little, angling away from the sun. Naruto didn't entirely know what direction they were supposed to be going, so he followed his teammate.

Naruto tilted his head up and inhaled deeply, like the captain did sometimes when he was trying to track something, but unfortunately, Naruto didn't have super-smell or super hearing or even super vision so all he could smell was the bandages and the overpowering wet-seaweed ocean smell.

He threw a glance over his shoulder, because Sakura-chan sometimes couldn't keep up very well because her stamina and chakra stores were 'ah-bis-mol' according to Zabuza-sensei and 'on the small side' according to Shisui-sensei. Sakura-chan glanced back at him, puzzled, so he grinned under the bandages and waved at her cheerfully before whipping his head back around to make sure Sasuke hadn't taken advantage of his distraction to shunshin or something because Itachi-sensei taught him how to do that the other day and Naruto hadn't figured it out yet but Sasuke could go like fifteen meters if he had enough time to prepare the jutsu and Naruto wouldn't put it past him to pull a fast one when he wasn't looking. He hadn't. Slightly disappointed, Naruto drooped and mentally crumpled up the draft of the rant he'd been preparing.

Running on the ocean was wonky because the surface kept bobbing up and down, and Naruto could be running down one wave only for it to do its wobbly thing and then suddenly Naruto would be running uphill instead. Mostly, though, it was pretty boring because it was just water, water, water, sky.

Naruto felt super weird just running out in the open. Like, they weren't even trying to hide. The only thing stopping an enemy team from finding them was the fact that there was so much ocean that you had to know exactly where something was in order to find it. He frowned. Or, he guessed, you could just keep wandering around on top of the water until you ran into it.

Like this ship, for example. They - or at least Sasuke - knew where it was going to be at this exact time, so they could just run up to it. It had also stopped and dropped anchor at the drop point, so that helped too.

The ship loomed over the water, and Naruto realized belatedly just how big it was - maybe twice the size of the one they'd ridden out of Kitakyushu on. Barnacles crusted on its hull peeked out as the waves broke against its sides, and the familiar, ominous creaking cut through the rush of wind and the flapping of the sails.

Sasuke crouched and sprang straight up and over the side of the ship. Naruto bunched chakra in his feet to follow suit and promptly crashed through the surface of the water. He yelped, but before he could fall more than thigh-deep, a hand grabbed him by the arm and dragged him up, up, all the way to the deck of the ship.

He twisted his head around and met Sakura-chan's longsuffering stare. "Thanks, Sa - Go-chan," he corrected sheepishly as she let him go. Sakura-chan's chakra control was the best, and sometimes Naruto wished he could trade the Kyuubi thing with her but then he remembered that he had like fifty times the amount of chakra that she did, which meant that he could use the super secret kage bunshin jutsu and she couldn't and then he was okay with his control sucking a little. He frowned at his pants, now sodden, and dripped his way after Sasuke, who hadn't even bothered turning around, that bastard.

The back of Naruto's neck prickled, like something was watching him. He flicked his eyes to the side and noticed for the first time a bunch of people just, like, on the ship. Which made sense, because otherwise the ship wouldn't move. They didn't seem to care too much that Naruto's team had just jumped out of the water onto their ship, because they just kept climbing the rigging and mopping the deck or coiling rope or whatever they were doing. There was a guy at the back with a giant wheel, and Naruto was about to wave hi at him but then he remembered that he was a shinobi on a war mission, and shinobi on war missions didn't have time to wave hi.

Sakura-chan strode past him when he slowed, stopping at Sasuke's side as a couple of guys with shinobi gear like kunai holsters and those back pouches met him under the tallest mast. Naruto trotted up and slid over to Sasuke's other side, because he was cool and professional like that. "I'm Hana-Shi-005, genin," introduced Sakura-chan, since Sasuke couldn't talk too well with the rebreather and both they and Zabuza-sensei had forbidden Naruto from talking to new people first. "These are Hana-Shi-004 and -006, also genin."

"Hana-Gun-1950, genin," said one of them. He had a bandana tied around the lower half of his face and another around his upper arm, and he glanced at Sasuke's totally excessively masked face warily.

"Hana-Gun-1949, genin," said the other guy, who looked more like he was the one in charge since he didn't even blink at them. He wore a bandana too, but over his forehead like he might a hitai-ate, probably since none of them were supposed to actually wear their hitai-ate because it was a secret that they were all in Mizu no Kuni. "The rest of our team is sleeping belowdeck, but welcome aboard the Yujimaru, sir."

Naruto wasn't very good at guessing ages but he was definitely older than Temari-nee and maybe younger than the captain? He frowned. They were all genin here, weren't they? These guys were older, they didn't have to be so formal! "Hey, hey, there's no need for - "

Sasuke had an irritating ability to read Naruto's mind, even though Itachi-sensei said the Sharingan didn't really do that Sasuke's wasn't actually active, but more importantly he slapped a hand over Naruto's mouth before he could finish.

The older genin stared at them warily, and if Naruto squinted, they looked - confused? Offended? Uncomfortable?

"Sorry about him," said Sakura-chan. "I don't know what our sensei saw in him."

Naruto stuck his tongue out but he forgot about the bandages, so instead of licking Sasuke's hand, his tongue made contact with the linen. He sputtered, and Sasuke shot him a very unimpressed stare.

"You're here for the supplies?" 1949 said after a pause. "They're right this way." He exchanged a glance with 1950.

Sakura-chan nodded and followed, but before Naruto could do the same, Sasuke used the hand covering his mouth to yank him in close with his mouth right next to Naruto's ear. "Remember what Sensei said? They're General Forces, we're Command Corps," he hissed. "Even if we're all genin, we outrank them and rank is very important during a war."

Naruto shot him an injured look as his teammate took his hand back. "I know," he said, although he really didn't remember that particular lecture and honestly not many lectures in general and he thought that particular rule was stupid anyways. "But they're older than us; it's weird! And not very friendly."

The bastard just rolled his eyes and stalked after Sakura-chan. Naruto considered throwing him overboard, but this was their first solo mission and he was not going to mess it up!

He followed his team and the two older genin belowdeck, squinting in the gloom, and promptly ran into something tall and wooden. He bounced off it - maybe multiple wooden things, like a stack of crates - and tripped back towards Sasuke. Only it turned out to be Sakura-chan, not Sasuke, and she caught him by the shoulder before he could fall.

One of the genin - 1950, maybe - turned around. "Careful," he said. "We're pretty sure this ship is smuggling narcotics into southern Hi, so that's probably not a box you want to stumble into."

"Narcotics," Sakura-chan repeated in a higher voice. Naruto didn't know what those were, but they weren't any kind of weapon he recognized.

"Yep." 1950 let the word roll off his tongue languidly. 1949 shot him the kind of look that Sakura-chan gave him sometimes when he did something she thought was being dumb, and 1950 straightened, and added, "Uh, sir."

Sasuke jerked his head impatiently, and 1949 gestured deeper into the hold. "There's about eighteen crates in here marked for the 25-34E and 25-35W bases. That's you, right?"

"Yeah," said Sakura-chan. "Thanks. Seal them up and we'll take it from here."

She pulled a pair of scrolls out of her backpack and passed them over to 1949, who tossed one to 1950. "Make yourself useful," he muttered to his teammate, which was probably supposed to be quiet but even Naruto with his non-super-hearing could hear it.

Naruto kind of stopped paying attention at this point because his eyes had finally adjusted enough for him to see the inside of the cargo bay a little better and for now that was a little more interesting. Crates piled high, tethered to beams and pillars by rope and netting cluttered the hold. He shifted his feet, and the wooden planks squelched.

"Have you heard any news?" Sakura-chan asked the other genin.

"News? No," said 1949. With a flash of chakra, the first crate vanished into the storage seal inked in his scroll.

Sakura-chan nodded absently. She shifted her weight a little. "What about stories?"

1949 and 1950 exchanged glances. 1950 let a slow smile creep across his face. "Yeah, I got a few," he said. "You hear about the battle on Blue Hawk Island? Four of our genin and chuunin teams were holding down a base there. One day, the genin on guard sees a woman walking towards the island, just strolling casually under the big blue - not a cloud in sight. She's got a full kimono, bracers on both arms, and red-purple hair down to her hips.

"Guard calls his team, and now this girl holds out her hands like she's offering them a hug and the ocean just starts rising. Not in waves or anything - just millions of drops of water, like a mist. Only, instead of a mist, they form clouds and darken the sky around the base, like nighttime dark. At this point, the guard decides they're in over their heads so they send a runner out to another base to get backup. Soon as he leaves, it starts raining and it doesn't stop. Chuunin-in-charge orders an assault on the kunoichi but the teams don't make it ten meters.

"By the time the runner gets there with the backup, she's gone. Everyone on the base is dead. Most of them are drowned on the beach, dozens of meters from the waterline. The rest are mangled - broken arms, ribs sticking out of chests, necks snapped. All they can do is clean up, you know?" 1950 shook his head. "They call her Kuramitsuha, bringer of rain."

"Sick," Naruto enthused. Not the part where all their people got killed, because that's terrible and Naruto wants to go yell at this kunoichi and probably punch her a lot, but one kunoichi against fifteen? Badass. Nicknamed after a goddess? Even more badass.

"I have one," said Sakura-chan. "You hear about the raid on One Flower Island? Two Anbu joined a nine-team raid to capture the outpost on One Flower Island and smoked the Kiri garrison out of their tower. One created a mist so thick, twelve enemy shinobi went in and none came back out. The other entered the stronghold alone and slaughtered four Kiri teams. When the assault teams arrived, they found him standing over six dead jounin without even a single drop of blood on him. He walked into the mist after his partner, and when it dispersed, both were gone, leaving behind only the bodies of their enemies floating in the waves." Sakura-chan paused, and 1949 jolted, having frozen while she told the story. "They call them the Koukyoma, the akuma who show a man to his doom," she finished.

The wild thing was that she was talking about their sensei . And Sasuke's brother. They sounded even more awesome the way Sakura-chan told it.

Another crate vanished into a seal. "We heard that one," 1949 commented. "Didn't think it was real at first."

Naruto exchanged a glance with Sasuke, who snorted. "It's real," Sasuke assured them.

"Here's another one," said 1950 eagerly. "You hear about the rescue of Team Morita?" he said, and Naruto tried really, really hard not to look too interested. "Four-man chuunin team got caught behind enemy lines by Kiri jounin who thought they'd find out what they knew. They're taking them apart piece by piece and drowning them real slow, but they don't say a thing.

"Out of nowhere a bolt of lightning comes screaming out of the sky and lights up the entire river they're camped next to, and it throws one of the jounin away from the guy he's carving up. The Kiri team panics, and an Anbu lands in the middle of them with a katana in one hand and a fistful of lightning in the other. It takes about two minutes for him to take them all down. He cuts Team Morita free, checks them over like a legit iryo-nin practically before the body of the last Kiri jounin hits the ground. He patches them up and half-carries them back to the nearest base, doesn't even break a sweat.

"They never see his face, never hear his voice, but someone at the camp tells them he's a captain, a real big fish. They call him Raijuu, the lightning wolf."

Naruto's jaw dropped. That was super cool , like totally hardcore! How many times had Team Morita gotten captured, to get rescued twice, once by the captain, and once by this other Anbu captain who also liked Raiton jutsu and was a super big deal in Hana-ha...oh, wait.

The captain was Raijuu, not just some creeper who lurked in the shadows and slit peoples' throats and told all the sensei what to do? So much more badass than Naruto had originally thought!

The last crate vanished in a flash of chakra, and 1950 swept the scrolls back up, handing them over to Sakura-chan, who passed them them back to Sasuke. "That's one I hadn't heard before," she said.

1950 grinned. "Yeah? Not bad, huh? Hope I get to see him in action someday."

Sasuke made that grumble-grunt-cough noise when he wanted to get Naruto's attention subtly and didn't want to make everyone else look, and Naruto's eyes snapped over. Just his eyes, because he was a ninja and everything and ninja were sneaky. He threw up his hands just in time to snatch the pair of scrolls Sasuke tossed at him - without fumbling, thanks, Sakura-chan - and reached behind him to shove them into his backpack. Sasuke took that distracted moment to brush past him, back to the ladder to the deck of the ship. Naruto twisted around and scowled furiously at his back.

"That's our cue," Sakura-chan said, her voice kind of dry the way it was when she was trying not to laugh but also wanted to hit him or Sasuke. "We better head out."

"See you around, sir," said 1949, touching his fingers to his head in a salute. It actually looked pretty cool, and Naruto was about to try and do it too, but then he remembered what Sasuke said. Did Command Corps genin salute? Naruto didn't know.

"Keep yourselves safe," said Sakura-chan in return, and shoved Naruto lightly.

The sunlight blinded him anew as he ascended, and he clawed blindly at the rungs of the ladder, and he paused a moment at the top, crouched on all fours until his eyes adjusted. Sakura-chan made an impatient noise below him, and he shuffled sideways.

Sasuke loomed over him, staring down from above the rebreather. "Let's go, already," he muttered.

"Give me a sec," Naruto complained. "How'd you get your eyes to work so fast?"

"Magic," Sakura-chan deadpanned, and strolled past.

"Go-Go-chan!" Naruto complained, but lurched his way after his teammates nonetheless.

"Go, you take point," directed Sasuke. "I'll take rear. Roku, stay in the middle and watch your back."

"Copy that!" said Naruto cheerfully and launched himself overboard. Sakura-chan landed ahead of him without even a splash, but Naruto touched down with a satisfying big but probably not sneaky whoosh of seawater.

Their first solo mission, already halfway over! No big deal. Kind of boring, actually. Not that they were really expecting trouble, since the enemy didn't usually bother with genin on supply runs when there were much bigger threats out there, but Naruto would've loved an awesome story to tell the others.

The kilometers rushed past as they ran, and Naruto kind of wished he could stay out here forever, with the sky above and the sea below instead of being cooped up at their base. All the mud had been cool at first but now it got everywhere, especially since Naruto's chakra control was pretty bad so he couldn't keep the stuff off as well as Sakura-chan or Hinata or Haku, who were pretty much spotless all the time.

"Incoming!" Sakura-chan slowed, and Naruto sprinted forward to join her. "Two o'clock, unknown number, unknown strength."

"Evasive maneuvers." Sasuke pulled up to run level with them. "Roku, you know what to do."

Huh? He did?

Oh! Yeah, he did. "Kage bunshin no jutsu!" Naruto crowed - quietly, because it was a super secret strong ninjutsu and also forbidden and nobody could know that he knew it except his team and the rest of the pack. He grabbed Sasuke and Sakura-chan by the arms as the summoning smoke of his clones billowed up over the water, obscuring them.

"How many did you make?" Sasuke grunted. "This way." He jerked them to the side, sixty degrees east of their current course.

Naruto wasn't too good at numbers and had maybe gotten a little too excited about the whole 'about to be ambushed' thing, so there were maybe fifty-ish clones? "Henge!" they shouted, right on cue, and then there were somewhere between ten and twenty teams - Naruto wasn't too sure - charging off in all directions.

Naruto threw a wild glance over his shoulder as the swarm of fake Teams Byakko scattered, but all he could see were copies of himself and Sakura-chan and Sasuke. "Do you see them?" he demanded.

"I think they went northwest," Sakura-chan panted. "Keep going."

Sasuke tucked his chin down to his chest without breaking pace so that his hair fell over his eyes, and Naruto watched him as best as he could without actually looking over because, again, he was a ninja who could do ninja things. His eyes slitted open, whirling red, and he glanced back in the direction they'd come from. "We're clear," he said, and his doujutsu-that-was-totally-cheating vanished. "Keep moving."

They weren't even coming after them? Lame.

Okay, so Naruto should be happy that his diversion worked because that was like his first time doing it on a solo mission, but he still wanted have a super cool new story to tell the rest of the pack, like that they fought off a whole team of Anbu or some shark summons or something.

Oof. The memories of his first dispelled shadow clones hit him all at once, and he shook his head like a dog to clear them away. Water, water, sky, blah, blah, blah. The clones had gotten bored and dispelled themselves, which, Naruto couldn't even be mad because he probably would have done the same thing. Since they were clones of him and all. The next group - more of the same. And then more.

And then popped the clones that had gotten chased! Wow, only a kunai each? Copouts. Naruto shrugged - mentally, because he was still running. He guessed nobody cared about genin after all.

"We're here," Sakura-chan announced.

Naruto squinted across the waves and suppressed a groan when he recognized the little speck in the horizon as their very muddy temporary home. But, hey, he could see Gaara and Hinata-chan and Sai and Neji and Temari-nee and Haku and Shisui-sensei and Zabuza-sensei and Itachi-sensei again! "Last one there has to tell Neji his cooking sucks!" he called gleefully, and bolted.

"Hey!" Sasuke snapped.

"We're on a mission!" Sakura-chan yelled after him.

Oh, yeah. He forgot about that. Being professional and all that. He slowed down, reluctantly, so they could go in looking like an actual team who had completed an actual solo mission and were ready for harder missions.

Haku met them out on the water, just a flash of light playing off his hands betraying the ice dancing across his fingers. He eyed them knowingly as they approached him. "Welcome back, Team Byakko," he said with his reassuring calm. "Passcode?"

"Hi, Ichi," said Sakura-chan. "Passcode is Sprig-Zero-Zero-Cat's Paw-Seven-Nine-Violet-Ghost."

"We got jumped!" Naruto cut in gleefully. "Except, not totally jumped, because we got away before they got to us - "

"Mission success," Sasuke said loudly over him, shoving down on Naruto's shoulder so he lost his footing. "We need to report."

Naruto squawked as he dropped, but Sakura-chan snagged the strap on his backpack and he found his footing before his knee crashed through the surface. "Watch it!" he cried. "I'm the one carrying the stuff!"

Haku's mouth twitched, and with a twist of his hand, the ice in it shattered into glittering powder. "You're just in time for lunch," he said. "Temari-san cooked."

Aww yeah.

Sakura-chan perked up. "What'd she make?" she asked eagerly, skipping ahead towards the island.

"Team Genbu practiced deep-sea diving earlier. I believe they caught some octopus and squid and such, and Hinata-chan found some clams and mussels on the beach, so she made seafood stew," Haku explained.

"Awesome," Naruto breathed. Seafood stew? Naruto had never had that before, unless he counted the fish stew that Neji had made a couple times, but that was just fish, so he didn't think it was really seafood unless there was more than one type of seafood in it.

Even Sasuke quickened his pace, so either he thought it sounded pretty good too or his chakra was low and he wanted to get to one of their platform islands before he lost his grip on it entirely and plunged into the water. That'd be funny, but Naruto was pretty sure his teammate was just hungry.

Temari-nee waved at them, but her mouth was full so she just pointed at the food shack. Naruto could smell the spicy-salty aroma, and his mouth watered. At her side, Neji sat seiza and probably ignored them, but he was wearing those dark wraparounds that hid his eyes entirely so maybe he like winked at them or something and Naruto just couldn't see it. But there was food, so he didn't care too much either way. Neji could be a bit of an arrogant jerk, but he was the pack's arrogant jerk.

"Hey, hold it," Shisui-sensei said mildly, as Naruto beelined for the food shack. "Mission comes first."

Oh, yeah, the mission. Oops.

He veered off to the platform he'd privately dubbed 'super important mission platform' and which Shisui-sensei referred to as the 'command deck' because he was adult and boring like that. Shisui-sensei stood there already, drumming his fingers on the maps and scrolls and reports laid out there already.

The super important mission platform was one of three that actually had a roof and walls - the other ones being the food supply shack, the platform where all the sensei slept. The rest were open to the air, because there were trees so it wasn't like the sun was shining on them directly so they didn't really need roofs, unless it rained. The big platform where the pack slept had a roof too, but no walls. Naruto didn't really think they needed them, anyways.

Naruto had kind of expected to see Itachi-sensei there, since they hadn't seen him out on the water or in the camp - not that they would be able to see him if he was hiding from them or something - but though Zabuza-sensei had been banging around the senseis' sleeping quarters, Itachi-sensei was nowhere to be found.

"Team Byakko, reporting in," announced Sakura-chan, and Naruto's attention snapped back guiltily.

Shisui-sensei's visible eye crinkled a little at the corner. "Go ahead."

"Hai. Contact made with genin Hana-Gun-1949 and -1950 aboard the Yujimaru. Eighteen crates of food provisions acquired and sealed into two storage scrolls," Sakura-chan recited, then paused.

Shisui-sensei looked at them expectantly. Sasuke kicked Naruto's ankle.

Ouch! That bastard! Naruto shot him a glare. Why'd he - oh.

He unslung his backpack by one strap and shoved in his arm elbow-deep. He rummaged through the contents, which must have gotten shuffled around while he ran: ration bar wrapper, mostly empty water bottle, another bar wrapper, one slightly squashed but still unopened ration bar, whetstone, extra ninja wire, cloth that was either for drying his hair or oiling his weapons, scrolls! He yanked them out victoriously, and maybe half of what had been on top of them went flying.

Sasuke leaned back as the coil of wire flew past his head, and Shisui-sensei reached out and caught his whetstone before it hit the table. Naruto grinned at Shisui-sensei sheepishly and ignored Sasuke's glower. "Here's the supplies!" he said, and quickly dropped them on the table before accidentally threw anything else.

Shisui-sensei slid his whetstone back across the table, and Naruto snatched it up, shoving it back into the depths of his backpack. Shisui-sensei picked up the scrolls, turning them over in his hands as he examined them closely. Naruto wasn't sure exactly what he was looking for, but he must have found it, because he set them down and said, "Good work, Team Byakko. Anything else to report?"

"Yes, um - " Sakura-chan bit her lip, eyes darting sideways to Sasuke. "Contact made with unknown shinobi and we took evasive actions."

Shisui-sensei quirked an eyebrow, and this time Naruto dodged Sasuke's jab, because he knew already, bastard. "I made like fifty clones and henged them into us!" Naruto resisted the urge to give a thumbs up because this was a mission briefing. Very serious. "And then - "

Zabuza-sensei stuck his head in the doorway. And his neck. And his shoulders. "Hey, Konoha," he said abruptly. "I'm taking Suzaku."

Naruto whipped around so fast his backpack slammed into his shoulder from behind and ow, that was his whetstone probably giving his arm a bruise. He glared at Zabuza-sensei, and he probably would have yelled at him for interrupting their super serious important mission debriefing but Zabuza-sensei was kind of scary and if he yelled at him he'd probably make Naruto do wind sprints until he drowned.

And he maybe was telepathic, because he swivelled his head like a snake and regarded Naruto with a flat stare. "Problem, brat?"

Naruto puffed up and promptly deflated when Sasuke's abnormally pointy elbow jabbed him right in the ribs.

"How long are you all going to be gone?" Shisui-sensei asked, as if nothing had happened.

Zabuza's eyes slid back over to Shisui-sensei. "Three, maybe four days. For that Jiroishikajuu mission. Need 'em to herd the rabbits back towards me."

Naruto's mouth dropped beneath his bandages. An actual combat mission? With Zabuza-sensei?

"I rather like rabbits, Zabuza-san," said Haku from behind Zabuza-sensei, somehow managing to sound both serene and severe at the same time.

Zabuza rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. "You'll be the death of me, kid," he muttered under his breath.

Shisui-sensei shook his head, but his mouth was crooked at the corner like he was trying to hide a smile. "Don't run them too ragged," he warned. "See you in a few days, Z."

Zabuza-sensei flicked his fingers in a maybe-ironic salute and ducked back out of the command deck. "Suzaku!" Naruto heard him call gruffly. "You have ten minutes to pack your shit!"

"So," said Shisui-sensei. "You made decoy teams."

Naruto really had planned to agree and keep going with his story - report - but when he opened his mouth, what came out was, "They get to go an a real mission?"

Sakura-chan made a noise like a whistling teakettle, and Naruto thought Sasuke's red swirly doujutsu might activate spontaneously. It didn't, though so Sasuke was probably annoyed but interested in the answer too.

Shisui-sensei frowned at them. "Debriefing first," he said. "And first rule of gathering information: don't let anyone know what you're interested in finding out. You give the other party the knowledge of what you're looking for and the power to deny it to you."

Naruto perked up. "So we shouldn't tell you about the mission, since you told us you want to know about it," he said slyly.

Shisui-sensei sighed.

"Gaara!" Naruto pounced on his fellow jinchuuriki - Itachi-sensei had for some reason drilled that word into his head painstakingly and then told him he should never say it out loud - and sprawled across his lap, his furred cloak billowing out behind him magnificently like feathers on a goose.

With eerie synchrony, and in complete silence because Team Genbu as a whole was unnaturally quiet, Hinata-chan and Sai raised their heads from their food to glance at him just briefly and then lost interest, because Naruto had pretty much done this every time he saw Gaara sitting down since they'd met.

Gaara had helpfully lifted his bowl out of way so Naruto didn't get any seafood stew juice in his hair because he loved Naruto like that. He beamed up at Gaara, who blinked back down on him tolerantly. "This is my food," he informed Naruto.

Naruto pouted. "Gaara," he whined. "I'm already comfortable."

Gaara ignored him and his hand flapping at Gaara's bowl as he carefully spooned a bite into his mouth. His jet-black hair flopped over his eyes, and even though he'd started dyeing his hair like half a year ago, Naruto still looked at him with the expectation of seeing shorter, rust-red spikes.

Naruto sighed dramatically, pawing halfheartedly at Gaara's wrist. "Temari-nee made that?"

Gaara's eyes crinkled just a little bit at the corners. "Yes," he said. "You should try some," he added, so whoa, it must be really good, especially if Gaara wasn't sulking over Temari-nee being gone again.

Naruto needed no more encouragement than that. He shot upright - again, Gaara pulled his bowl out of the way, so he was the best - and leapt straight onto the mud, landing in a crouch on all fours. He pounced into the doorway of the food shack and almost crashed into Sasuke.

His teammate scowled and whirled out of the way, twisting the bowl so it didn't spill. "Calm down, there's plenty," he said, rolling his eyes as Naruto jerked to a stop before crashing into Sakura-chan.

Sakura-chan glared over her bowl of stew. "If I spill a single drop of this, I will drown you," she threatened, and wow was she channelling Zabuza-sensei.

Naruto raised both hands defensively, sidling sideways through the doorway as Sakura-chan stalked past with her stew. Sakura-chan got grumpy sometimes when she hadn't eaten in a while. Shisui-sensei had learned a little medical stuff when he got really hurt and needed to be seen by an iryo-nin like every day until he'd gotten better and he said it happened because her sugar was low, which Naruto didn't really get because Sakura-chan wasn't even that sweet to begin with and also what did that have to do with medical stuff?

The other teams must really have caught a lot of sea creatures, because Temari-nee had made two giant vats of the seafood stew, and at least one of them had already been scraped dry. Clearly, Zabuza-sensei had already been here. Maybe also Itachi-sensei, though he'd been gone by the time Naruto's team got back, because even though he was the shortest of the sensei and only a little taller than Haku, he could eat a surprising amount when he wasn't in battle.

He unhooked the ladle from the side of the pot and took a bowl from the stack in the crate, cackling gleefully, because food! Good food! Tasty, tasty food.

He maybe filled his bowl a little too full and slopped the liquid over the side. He twisted his neck to pull his bandages down so he could lick the drip of stew off his hand, because even though Sakura-chan wasn't here and she hadn't threatened it specifically, he wouldn't put it past her to maybe drown him a little for spilling his. He balanced the stew carefully, sitting down on the platform's edge so he could feel for the surface of the mud with his feet without taking his eyes off his food.

Sasuke sat with his back to the corner post of the big platform like the antisocial bastard he was with his rebreather hooked from one ear, while Team Genbu clustered on the opposite side. Sakura-chan had opted to sit next to Hinata-chan, shoulder to shoulder with the other girl. Naruto crawled up onto the platform in time to hear Hinata-chan say, "D-did you h-hear any s-stories?"

"We heard one about the captain," said Sakura-chan. "Oh, and there was one about a Kiri kunoichi called Kuramitsuha."

Sai tilted his head like a bird as Hinata glanced up from beneath her eyelashes, and even though Gaara was pretending like he didn't care, Naruto knew he loved hearing the stories. "K-Kuramitsuha?" Hinata echoed. "W-we hadn't h-heard t-that one b-before," she said.

Sakura-chan stuck the tip of her spoon in her mouth. "You hear about the battle on Blue Hawk Island?" She recited. "Four of our genin and chuunin teams were holding down a base there."

It was kind of interesting how Sakura-chan could say the exact same words but somehow make them sound different. In any case, Naruto had heard the story already so he didn't feel bad going for seconds in the middle of it. And then thirds, when it ended.

Naruto had heard the horror stories about food at other camps, and his team had to go deliver one of the scrolls to a different camp and probably stay there overnight and eat at least one meal there, so Naruto was determined to eat as much of Temari-nee's cooking as he could before he left. Plus, with the entire Team Suzaku gone for half a week, that meant the only people in the cooking rotation whose food was actually good was maybe Sasuke, Shisui-sensei, and Hinata-chan. And Itachi-sensei? Maybe?

Sasuke clearly thought the same thing, because he said, "Where's Karasu-sensei?" Sasuke and Itachi-sensei had this weird hangup where Sasuke called Itachi-sensei 'sensei' around pretty much everyone else and only called him 'Aniki' when it was just the two of them, which was really weird because they were brothers and if Naruto had a brother he'd call him 'nii-san' or 'aniki' or even 'oni-chan' all the time even though he was a guy. Itachi-sensei and Sasuke were weird though, because they said they wanted to be professional and Sasuke said a real shinobi was always professional and Naruto respected that, he really did, but family was something really special and Naruto didn't have any except the pack and they weren't actually blood-related even though he and Sakura-chan and sometimes Sasuke called Temari-nee 'Temari-nee' along with Gaara and Hinata-chan called her nee-san sometimes, usually when Neji wasn't around because Neji was kind of a jerk.

"He is completing an urgent solo mission to the south," Sai answered. "I do not believe he will return for another two days."

Sasuke nodded, because he clearly wasn't seeing the important point. "Couldn't he have brought us with him?" Naruto wheedled. "We only got a supply run, we could've helped him out!"

"Unlikely," Sai said dismissively, but Naruto knew he and his robot voice was just his normal voice so he didn't take it personally. "Logically, three below-genin level children can do very little to help an A- to S-ranked nuke-nin who is an accomplished assassin, infiltrator, and capable of killing six jounin-level opponents in a pitched battle."

Uh, okay, that Naruto did take personally, because that was way too much of an attack not to. "We can do stuff!" he insisted. "We practically took down a jounin!"

"The nature of Karasu-sensei's assignments are likely beyond what even a normal jounin is capable of handling," Sai pointed out. "You would be hampering him, because any enemy would exploit a weakness such as three children on a battlefield for which they are not yet prepared."

"We're not a weakness!" Naruto objected. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see Hinata-chan and Gaara's heads turning back and forth between him and Sai as they batted words back and forth, Hinata-chan anxiously and Gaara placidly.

"Okay!" Sakura-chan cut in loudly. "We have a mission - which is not with Itachi-sensei - and we need to go soon, so - " She reached over and slapped the back of Naruto's head.

Traitor. She was Naruto's teammate, damn it. "Ow!" he complained, swatting at her halfheartedly.

"Quit picking fights!" she scolded.

Naruto's jaw dropped - which everyone could see now, since his bandages were still hanging loose around his neck. "He started it!"

"He's not wrong," Sasuke pointed out.

Finally, someone on his side. "Thank you!" Naruto exclaimed, throwing up his hands and accidentally knocking his bowl off the platform. He lunged and caught it before it hit the mud, popping back upright.

Sasuke snorted. "Not you. Sai," he said, but he was scowling so he was definitely not happy about it.

Ugh. Naruto's entire team was made up of traitors. Team Genbu had the solidarity thing down, and even though Team Suzaku fought a little - well, Temari-nee and Neji fought and Haku sometimes gave them the cold shoulder - but no, Sasuke didn't even have his back in one measly argument. "You all suck," he sulked, flopping onto his back.

"I-I'm sure y-you will have m-more c-challenging missions s-soon," Hinata-chan offered because she was awesome like that.

"And now it's time for the one we were already assigned," Sakura-chan said pointedly, hopping down off the platform onto the mud. Sasuke slid after her languidly, the hilt of his katana clanking off the rough wood of the deck.

Naruto sighed and rolled off the edge, landing in a crouch. It wasn't like he didn't want to go on the mission because he did and he was kind of looking forward to getting out there a bit and running and also seeing another real base with real Hana-ha shinobi - he just kind of missed the days when it was just the pack with Neko-sensei even though they hadn't met Haku or even called themselves the 'pack' yet, or when they ran wild around San's forest and the training was fun, more like war games than an actual war.

Naruto hadn't seen much of actual war - none of the pack had, except Team Suzaku, and even then mostly Haku - but even though fighting was cool and everything, Naruto knew people were dying out there. He'd heard the stories, even seen Team Morita in the aftermath of their torture, back in Kitakyushu. Naruto really just wanted to get strong enough to be able to protect everyone, then he'd just make all the Kiri shinobi back down and then he could go to Konoha and force Danzo to take them back and get him arrested for all the people he killed.

"Hey!" Sakura waggled a scroll in front of his face, and Naruto blinked. "Naruto! This scroll isn't going to deliver itself."

Naruto flinched. "I'm coming," he said indignantly. He darted over to the food shack to drop off his bowl first, because Zabuza-sensei had literally beaten that into him. Zabuza-sensei was a complete neat freak for such a bloodthirsty guy. A little of the stew juice got on his hand, and he scrubbed it on his pants absently.

Sakura scrunched her nose at him. "That's gross," she informed him, and turned in a whirl of her cloak. Sasuke rolled his eyes and followed her.

Naruto stuck his tongue out at her back, but hopped down on the mud after his team anyways. "Bye, Shisui-sensei!" he yelled in the general direction of the super important mission deck. "Bye, Sai! Bye, Gaara! Bye, Hinata-chan!"

Hinata-chan lifted one hand in a meek wave and her teammates sort of stared a farewell, he guessed. Shisui-sensei didn't say anything but since he was the one who'd sent them on this supply mission - part two - Naruto assumed he knew when they were going. And also he was a bit buried under paperwork, because for some reason running a war took a lot of paperwork, and just the other day, Shisui-sensei had complained that he'd been promoted to captain just so he could handle Itachi-sensei's and Zabuza-sensei's workloads while they were running missions. That was news to Naruto, because he hadn't even known Shisui-sensei was a captain.

"Roku," Sasuke said impatiently.

"Huh?"

Sakura-chan waved the scroll in his face again. "You're supposed to be carrying it, remember?" she prompted.

Oh, yeah. Naruto shoved it into his backpack again, and pulled his bandages back up to his nose for good measure.

Back in the forest, he knew the captain'd had his ninken do supply runs. He missed the dogs. They were super friendly and cuddly and had wicked teeth and could carry the heavy, forearm-long scrolls to the different bases all over the Elemental Lands the way smaller summons couldn't, but he hadn't seen any of the ninken since they left Tetsu for the last time because they were too busy playing decoy on the mainland and drawing Danzo's hunters away by henging into the captain, which was totally cool. Naruto hadn't known that dogs could do ninjutsu too.

"Hey," said Naruto speculatively. "You think we'll see some more summons?"

"Talking to other peoples' summons is rude," Sasuke reminded.

"I'm not going to talk to them." Naruto squinted at Sakura-chan's back, offended. "I just wanna see them."

"Summons are relatively uncommon," said Sakura-chan. "Summoning scrolls are passed down through families and closely guarded, so only the direct descendants of certain clans call on summons."

"Old clans," added Sasuke.

"Those with connections to the wild spirits who used to roam the land," Sakura-chan agreed.

Naruto blew out a sigh at the lecture, but he would admit it was pretty interesting stuff, and the kind of stories he and Sakura-chan both liked. He guessed that meant he wouldn't be seeing any summons, then. And the captain had to be from a pretty old clan then, if he had summons. Old like him, maybe. He already had grey hair and everything.

Naruto squinted over his shoulder, at the sun, and splayed out his fingers. Three fingers, so three hours to sunset. Sasuke watched him, unimpressed.

"Hey, Shi, you remind me of the sun!" Naruto told him cheerfully.

Sasuke stared back at him. "Too bright for you? Will hurt you if you stare too long?"

"What - no." Naruto scowled at him. "Temperamental and likes to burn things."

Sasuke rolled his eyes, but he was in 'serious mission mode' so he didn't bother relataliating.

As the sun's dying rays spilled across the waves, Sakura pulled up abruptly, and Naruto stopped short, startled out of his thoughts, and landed in a crouch at her side. Sasuke set his back to theirs, tense and alert. Just ahead of them, Naruto could see a faint smudge - an island, and hopefully the right one with the right base because Naruto still didn't really know where they were or where they were supposed to go. His neck prickled.

"Show yourself," Sakura-chan called, her voice steady even as her hand inched towards her kunai holster.

The surface of the water five meters away bubbled, and a dark head surfaced, followed by a set of shoulder and hands that pressed flat against the top of the water to lever the rest of the kunoichi's body out. "Fantasy-Black-Seven-Three-Cat's Paw-Sandalwood-Six," she said, uncaring of the water that streamed down her face and off her flak jacket. "Code?"

"Veil-Three-Queen-Apple-Nine-Nine-Flame-Zero-Gold," said Sakura-chan, and the other kunoichi nodded, straightening into a relaxed pose. "I'm Hana-Shi-005, genin, and these are Hana-Shi-004 and Hana-Shi-006, genin. We're a supply team."

Naruto waved.

"Hana-Shi-092, chuunin," said the kunoichi, and though her face never changed, her voice seemed to soften. "Supply run, huh? This way."

Naruto's mouth dropped beneath the bandages as they neared the island. Compared to the pack's island, this base sprawled over three times the area, with sandy beaches and palm fronds at the shoreline and thick forest beyond. No mud in sight. Why didn't they get such a nice base?

It was clear that this base was much more heavily populated as well. A team sparred easily on the beach, kicking up clouds of sand as they darted in and out of the fray. Dark figures perched in the treeline, so still they'd have blended in perfectly if not for the flash of light off metal as one walked a kunai across his knuckles.

"Kogane!" called 092 as they stepped onto land, and one of the shinobi in the trees detached himself from the shadows, trotting across the sand to meet them. She jerked a thumb at Team Byakko. "Supply team's here. I'm taking them into camp. Cover the rest of my shift?"

"Yare, yare," muttered Kogane. "You just want an excuse to get off early, Bara." He saluted lazily nonetheless and took off across the water.

"You wouldn't believe the slop we've been living off of," 092 - or Bara, since that was an actual name - said as an aside. "We were lucky enough to have a couple teams bring back some wild boars from another island this morning, but the last food shipment we got was nothing but those squishy canned sausage things. Meat's not supposed to be that soft. Tell me you have something besides that." She ran an agitated hand through her hair.

"We're not sure, sir," said Sakura-chan doubtfully, glancing at Sasuke, who shrugged. "We picked up the crates from a different team, so we don't actually know what's inside."

Bara heaved a long-suffering sigh. "Don't worry about it," she said. "After the Fall, when I was still a genin, my team did nothing but supply runs too, but we liked to peek at what we were carrying."

Sakura-chan straightened a little. "You were a Konoha genin before the Fall?" she asked interestedly.

"Hm?" Bara glanced over, surprised. "Ah. Yes. I did think you looked a little young. I wasn't recruited; I was part of one of the genin teams originally from Konoha. During the Fall, my team was away from Konoha, and our sensei decided it was too dangerous to return when we heard what had happened."

Sasuke frowned. "Why?" he asked. "Danzo purged specific groups."

"And sympathizers," Sakura-chan added. "Unless - " she hesitated, biting her lip, though she didn't glance at Sasuke. "Did you have an Uchiha or a Nara on your team?"

Bara turned away from them with a sigh. "That knowledge is dangerous," she admonished mildly, and kept walking.

Sakura-chan winced. Naruto stored the encounter away for future reference, because Sakura-chan didn't stick her foot in her mouth very often and it was kind of funny - or it would be, when enough time had passed so that it could be considered funny, which Sakura-chan probably thought was more time than Naruto did - but for now he kept his own mouth shut so he didn't make things worse.

"I don't know what kind of camp you're out of, but the jounin-in-charge runs a tight ship here on Gull Hill. So just be careful," Bara tossed over her shoulder.

"What's Gull Hill?" Naruto asked. Sasuke stepped on his heel.

"This base," said Bara, giving him a funny look. "The Gull Hill base, located on Gull Hill Island?"

"Oh," said Naruto thoughtfully.

"He didn't read the briefing," Sasuke muttered. "This is 25-34E, idiot."

"Did too!" Naruto objected. "I just don't remember any of it."

"Anyways, the jounin-in-charge's pretty hung up on rank and protocol, so, just, keep your heads down," Bara said.

"Hai," said Sakura-chan hurriedly, after a beat, and Bara shot her a glance that was maybe exasperated and amused at the same time.

They crested the hill. The camp had been built around the trees, rather than clearing out an open space Canvas and rope wrapped the trunks, and shinobi blurred to and fro purposefully. A few trees in the center of the camp had been felled to make room for the fire twining smoke into the leaves, around which a team of shinobi hovered over the massive hunks of meat draped over long spits. This camp was one of the coolest things Naruto had ever seen, and he couldn't even say anything about it because he had to be a serious shinobi. He vibrated in equal parts glee and distress.

"Per protocol, I'll escort you to the command tent, and after you check in, you can head over to the base quartermaster," Bara explained. "She'll verify and confirm what you brought and assign you temporary quarters if you're staying here overnight." She glanced over at Sakura-chan. "Are you?"

"We were told we'd be spending the night and leaving in the morning, sir," Sakura-chan answered, with a fleeting look backwards at Naruto and Sasuke.

Movement out of the corner of his eye startled him sideways, and Naruto dodged out of the way as a pair of shinobi burst out of a tent flap next to him, one carrying a crate full of kunai, the other with shuriken. He watched them go until Sasuke shoulder-checked him, and he trotted after Sakura and Bara. Despite all the movement, there were very few shinobi actually in the camp itself - most of them were tending the fire and the food. "Where is everyone?" he muttered out of the side of his mouth to Sasuke.

Bara turned. "Most of the garrison will be training or running patrols," she answered. "We're in a bit of a lull right now; no active missions outside holding the base down. This way." She ducked into a large tent tucked in the far side of the camp.

Naruto found the sleek wooden desk just inside the tent flap hilariously incongruous. Here they were, in the middle of a war, on an island in the middle of the ocean where a tent was the most permanent structure for hundreds of kilometers around, and this prim shinobi wearing reading glasses looped around his neck with a beaded string was sitting at a glossy desk stacked with neat folders of paper on one side and scrolls on the other. The shinobi barely glanced up at their entrance, but when Naruto looked over at Bara, the older kunoichi was standing at rigid attention. Naruto straightened, suddenly aware that Sakura and Sasuke had already lined up neatly on either side of him.

"Chuunin Hana-Shi-092 escorting supply team Hana-Shi-004-005-006, sir," she bit out, and only then did the desk shinobi look up briefly.

"Passcode," he ordered, turning a page in his packet.

"Veil-Three-Queen-Apple-Nine-Nine-Flame-Zero-Gold. Sir," she added a little belatedly.

Desk-shinobi didn't seem to care. He merely reached for a scroll and unfurled it in one quick movement to scribble something in it. "092, escort them to the quartermaster," he ordered. "You, genin, report back at 0600 tomorrow for departure."

"Hai," said Bara, echoed raggedly by Team Byakko. Desk-shinobi glanced up at them a second time, one eyebrow raised severely. Bara flicked her hands at Naruto's team in a subtle shooing motion, like Temari-nee did when she was trying to get them out of somewhere without them causing more trouble.

Too late.

"What's going on out here?"

Naruto froze, looking over his shoulder, and met the eyes of a tall, dark-eyed shinobi with frown lines etched around his eyes and mouth who emerged from the back wall of the tent's entryway, beyond which Naruto could see a large table, like Shisui-sensei's, scattered with maps and scrolls and little markers clustered on top. His lips thinned as he regarded them, the three genin and one chuunin mid-hustle out the exit. Naruto couldn't have responded even if he wanted to, because the shinobi's glare froze any words in his throat. It was like he could tell every slightly bad thing Naruto might have done in his entire life and was about to order him to do wind sprints until he passed out like Zabuza-sensei always threatened to do, but somehow equally scary even without the killing intent.

Bara proved she was a true leader and brave kunoichi by immediately saying, "Just escorting a supply team to the quartermaster, sir."

"Supply team?" the jounin said sharply. "These children?"

"I'm Hana-Shi-005, and these are Hana-Shi-004 and -006. We're genin, sir," Sakura said bravely.

"The correct address is 'Genin Hana-Shi-005 with Genin Hana-Shi-004 and Genin Hana-Shi-006, sir,'" the jounin corrected almost dismissively, and turned to the desk shinobi. "Code check out?"

Desk-shinobi, true to form, was unfazed. "Yes, sir," he said. He shifted an entire stack of paper to the side. Naruto admired desk-shinobi, because this jounin was almost as scary as the captain.

"Kami knows who's sending children into my warzone," the jounin muttered, then raised his voice. "Carry on," he ordered, and turned back into the command room.

Bara blew out a shaky breath after they filed out. "I'm glad I don't see him every day," she said dryly. "There's a story going around camp that when he was a fresh chuunin, he stopped an entire squad of samurai in their tracks with killing intent alone. Okay, kids, to the quartermaster."

Naruto wondered if being scary was a requirement for being jounin, because Sasuke's older brother was like creepy-scary and Zabuza-sensei was mean-scary and the captain was just scary-scary and even though Shisui-sensei was usually pretty friendly even though he never smiled he could be really scary when he got mad. Naruto obviously was going to be jounin one day, would he have to be scary too? He didn't really want to be scary, just strong. He hoped the quartermaster wasn't scary. "Is she a jounin too?" he asked.

"The quartermaster?" Bara took a sharp right around a tent corner, and Naruto's team followed like a row of ducklings. "She's tokujo. You'll like her."

Compared to the almost sterile command tent, the quartermaster's supply tent reeked of organized chaos. Crates stacked haphazardly stretched almost to the ceiling, some open and spilling their contents to the ground and some still nailed shut. Naruto tripped over a box of shuriken next to a pile of cabbages.

"Watch it," a voice snapped, and a small figure shot around a stack of canned foods to glower at them, arms folded across her chest. "Bara, don't you bring these anarchists into my sanctum!"

"Hi, Junko-sensei," Bara said, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "This is a genin team on a supply run. Don't scare them too much."

The quartermaster could only be twenty centimeters taller than Sakura-chan, the tallest of the team, and definitely a lot shorter than Itachi-sensei. She was a tokubetsu jounin? She kind of looked like a gust from Temari-nee's fan would send her halfway across the ocean.

Quartermaster Junko, Junko-juhin surveyed them with sharp eyes and harrumphed, putting her hands on her hips, and Naruto noticed the bulging holsters at her waist. "These shrimps? They're toddlers," she said, unimpressed.

"I intercepted them out on the ocean, sensei," said Bara. "They can water-walk and everything."

"Is she your jounin sensei?" Naruto piped up, eyeing Junko-juhin interestedly.

Junko-juhin snorted, and Bara shook her head wryly. "Junko-sensei is technically my commanding officer, but she told me to call her 'sensei' instead of 'sir' when I got here. The jounin-in-charge doesn't really like it, but - "

"Masato can't do shit to me about it," Junko-juhin interrupted, brushing a hand through short cropped hair. "This place'll fall apart without me. Besides, it reminds me of being part of a Village instead of just a rogue shinobi army."

"Sensei," Bara admonished with a combination of exasperation and disbelief. Junko-juhin waved her off.

Wow. This lady was way cool. And she wasn't super scary! Just kind of scary. Naruto wanted to be her when he grew up.

"They're staying the night," Bara added. She hesitated. "Sensei, if you could maybe - "

"Pah!" grumbled the quartermaster. "Like hell I'm putting them with the rabble. Look at them, they'll be eaten alive. I got a couple extra bunks back here, they can squeeze in with me."

Bara blew out a breath.

"What's wrong with the rapple?" Naruto asked.

"Rabble," Sasuke corrected under his breath.

Both Bara and Junko-juhin turned to look at him at the same time, and he resisted the urge to fidget.

"Nothing," Bara said after a too-long pause.

"War's hell," Junko-juhin said bluntly. "Some of these guys'll take it out on the easiest target."

"On their own people?" Sakura-chan demanded, the horror in her voice mirroring the icy spike that drove into Naruto's heart.

Bara shifted uncomfortably. "Not usually," she said hastily. "But, you know, sometimes an argument'll get out of hand. And you three are a little more breakable than most."

Naruto exchanged glances with Sakura-chan and Sasuke. Sakura-chan's eyes reflected her worry and uncertainty, while Sasuke's burned with resentment.

"It'll make me feel better if you just stay out of the way," Bara added. "And be careful."

"We're always careful!" Naruto reassured her. For some reason, Junko-juhin snorted a laugh while Bara smiled reluctantly.

"I have a team meeting," said Bara, "but I'll check in with you later. Junko-sensei'll take good care of you."

Junko-juhin snorted. "Get out of here," she growled, slapping Bara halfheartedly on the shoulder. "Keeping us all from doing our jobs. Genin," she said, as Bara flitted back out the way they'd come, "follow me."

Naruto followed, but Sasuke grabbed him by the shoulder and Sakura-chan slid neatly in front of them. Naruto glared at Sasuke, who raised one sardonic eyebrow back at him just like Zabuza-sensei did when they messed up. Right. Not supposed to talk to new people first. Naruto sulked silently. It wasn't like he was going to let their real identities slip or anything.

Team Byakko had run supply missions before, but before today they had always followed the sensei and hadn't really talked to the other shinobi in the bases, and because Zabuza-sensei and Itachi-sensei were both pretty important people in Hana-ha, they always did the reporting in and were always given private quarters and always shared them with the teams, whether it was them or Team Genbu or Team Suzaku. As he peeked out of the tent from a crack between the wall and the ceiling canvas, Naruto wondered if that had been on purpose.

No way did Zabuza-sensei and Itachi-sensei have to run supply missions if they were that important. But wouldn't it be suspicious if two super strong Anbu like them always guarded the same couple of genin teams? Maybe that's why they started letting the teams go by themselves.

Naruto knew, kind of in vague sense, that they couldn't ever let anyone know who they were. Shisui-sensei's missing eye served as a bleak reminder of what could happen to Sasuke or Neji or Hinata-chan if anyone ever found out who they were, especially since Sasuke could use his red swirly eyes too now even if he did have some performance issues. And there was him and Gaara, which Naruto didn't understand too well. Something about the jinchuuriki thing.

But Naruto would rather get hurt than watch Sakura-chan or even Sasuke get hurt. A couple weeks ago, before they first landed on their base on the super muddy island of mud, they'd been ambushed on the water and Naruto had gotten stabbed but he was fine afterwards, so it was probably better if he got hurt instead of either of them.

Outside, shinobi hunched around small fires dotting the forest, the furthest just vague silhouettes against the flames as they ate and conversed in tones too low for Naruto to make out. Naruto's campfire dinners had always been warm, friendly affairs among the pack; here, a chill hung in the air despite the muggy air swaying indolently through the trees, and shinobi sat or crouched stiffly, eating in methodical bites. He shivered.

"Hey," said a voice behind him, and Naruto jerked, nearly banging his head on a metal support as he whipped his head around. Sakura-chan coughed on a laugh as Bara raised an eyebrow. "I brought you guys some food," the older kunoichi said, raising her arms, laden with battered metal bowls.

Food! Naruto bounded off his stack of crates. "You're the best," he informed Bara, who looked kind of startled but she'd brought him food so it was true.

Sasuke, who had been sitting against large box with his eyes shut, slid his eyes open, and after a moment coiled to his feet like a cat, aka a total showoff.

"Thanks, sir," Sakura-chan added as she took one of the bowls.

"You kids are lucky," Bara said wryly. "Fresh meat is pretty rare here on Gull Hill. Where's Junko-sensei?"

"She's unpacking the stuff we brought," said Sakura-chan, shuffling idly in front of Naruto.

Naruto paused, one hand on the bandages over his mouth. He ducked a little and turned the rest of the way towards the wall before slipping them down. He shovelled the food into his mouth as fast as he could, and almost choked on the dry, stringy meat. Wow. This was considered good food?

No time to waste. He tipped the bowl into his open mouth and swallowed, yanking the bandages back up to covered his mouth and nose. Ugh. He hated speed-eating. How did the captain do it so well? He tucked the bowl behind his back as he turned.

Bara gave him a look that said the she most definitely had not been fooled.

Naruto glanced back and forth between Bara and Sakura-chan and cast about for an excuse. "I'm Go-Go-chan's red hernia," he tried.

Bara raised both eyebrows. "Her what now?"

Sakura-chan rolled her eyes. "Red herring," she corrected, familiar exasperation thick in her voice.

"You don't tell someone you're a red herring, idiot," Sasuke muttered. Naruto scowled under his bandages, because Sasuke's bowl was completely empty and his rebreather perfectly in place and Naruto hadn't even seen him eat. "That completely defeats the purpose."

"It's fine," Bara said, a smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. "Keep your secrets, kids. You may as well get some rest since you won't be expected to join the guard rotations."

Sakura-chan paused, food halfway to her mouth. "Are you on guard tonight?" she asked with trepidation.

Bara snorted. "No, no. I did my shift this afternoon." She caught the look on Sakura-chan's face and reared back. "Oh. Oh, no. I'm not here to babysit."

In very un-Sakura-chan form, she widened her eyes so the very pretty green was very evident and did her best sad face, and honestly Naruto might have dropped everything to give her whatever she wanted at that moment because she looked very devastatingly miserable. Bara proved not to be immune, because she heaved a sigh and raised her eyes to the sky. Ceiling. Whatever. "Fine," she growled. "I can stay in here for the night, if- if! Junko-sensei doesn't mind."

"You want to babysit the kids, I'm not stopping you," Junko-juhin grumbled, stumping past. She shoved the emptied scroll back at Sakura-chan, who accepted it automatically. "I'm going to sleep. Show 'em to the flour sacks."

Naruto sneezed. The burlap flour sacks were surprisingly comfortable, and if he shifted just right he could shove his knee right where it could dig into Sasuke's kidney.

"Cut it out," Sasuke grunted, his voice drowsy and only a little annoyed.

"Psst," said Naruto. "Are you awake?"

"Obviously," Sasuke muttered.

"What do you think it's like, being genin in a shinobi village?"

Sasuke shifted so Naruto could see the dim light glint off his eyes. "Why're you asking? You lived there too."

"Yeah, but - " He chewed on his lip. "I dunno. I never really saw genin teams. I mean, sometimes they ran errands for the orphanage, but she always made me stay upstairs."

Sasuke watched him quietly for a moment, the shadow of a frown furrowing his brow. "Who made you stay upstairs? Why?"

"The baa-san who ran the orphanage," said Naruto. "And I dunno. She said nobody wanted to see dirty no-name orphans. The shopkeepers always kicked me out too, but I think that's 'cos I didn't have a lotta money."

"That's not supposed to happen," Sasuke said suspiciously.

Naruto shrugged. He didn't think about it much; that was the past, when he was just a little kid and not a shinobi.

"Do you think Sai had that happen to him too?" Sasuke asked. "He's Nanashi. Did you know him in the orphanage?"

"Nah," said Naruto. "Never met him. Maybe he was in one of the other ones."

Sasuke shifted, and Naruto could see patches of flour dusted in his hair. "There's more than one?"

"Huh?" Naruto said, distracted. "Orphanages? Yeah, there's three. What about the genin teams though? Your brother was on one once, wasn't he?"

"Yeah," said Sasuke after a pause. "I was really little then, though. I don't remember a lot. He was Shirei-bu, obviously, so he had a jounin sensei and two genin teammates who were both older than him."

Naruto squinted at him through the gloom. "All genin have jounin sensei," he pointed out.

"No, that's just the Command Corps," Sasuke corrected. "Shirei-bu. Guntai genin teams sometimes have jounin sensei, sometimes tokujo, and sometimes chuunin sensei. There's not enough jounin to go around."

"Oh," said Naruto. He thought about that. "D'you think we'd have been Shirei-bu?"

"Of course," said Sasuke dismissively. "We're way more advanced than most Academy students when they graduate."

"What'd they do? Your brother's team," he added, in case Sasuke had forgotten. "Did they train and stuff?

"Yeah," said Sasuke in a tone that said exactly what he thought of Naruto's intelligence for even asking. "Every day. And they did missions most days too."

"Like ours," Naruto prompted.

"No, stupid ones," said Sasuke. "There wasn't a war, so most of the genin teams did maintenance or ran easy errand missions in the village. Walking dogs and grocery shopping and stuff. Aniki's team did all that too."

Naruto tried and failed to imagine Itachi-sensei at their age, doing something as mundane as weeding or gardening or delivering mail. It was almost absurd - Itachi-sensei's cold precision applied to something like painting a fence or mowing a lawn. He'd always kind of thought of Itachi-sensei as emerging fully formed as a deadly assassin, who had never done anything less than the most dangerous of missions.

Then he thought about the pack and how they had spent years running with Neko-sensei and then Itachi-sensei and Shisui-sensei and Zabuza-sensei and the captain, and the days where they shivered in threadbare clothing in the forest and villages in enemy territory with their stomachs hollow, haunted by fear and nursing fevers or seeping wounds. He remembered, vaguely, sunny days in Konoha, where civilians and shinobi alike bustled around cheerfully, carefree, and thought it wouldn't be so bad to live in a place where the hardest mission they did was chasing cats around. "I wouldn't mind doing stupid missions," he yawned, and noticed that somewhere between one moment and the next his voice had grown groggy with sleep.

"Mm," Sasuke muttered incoherently. Naruto would have accused him of not paying attention, but he was already asleep.

Naruto wasn't sure what had woken him up when he jolted awake, adrenaline slicing through the haze of sleep-fog and already-forgotten dreams. At that point, it didn't matter, because the flour sacks under him ignited in a flash as he rolled off, and he yelped, muffled under his bandages.

The blast blew him across the tent, and he crashed into a stack of crates, which came crashing down on top of him. For a moment, he lay stunned under the crates, blinking the spots out of his eyes, and then someone reached down and grabbed him by the shoulder, hauling him out bodily and setting him roughly on his feet. "Go, go, go!" shouted Bara, giving him a shove from behind.

Naruto fled blindly through the maze of crates. He turned a stack of boxes and crashed headlong into another someone, who twisted as they fell so Naruto landed under them.

"Get up!" Sakura-chan snapped, pushing herself off him and dragging him up by the arm.

"But - " Naruto twisted around even as he ran after her.

"I'm right here," Sasuke growled, whirling around the next corner. "We need to get out of here."

"Shouldn't we help?" Naruto objected. Outside, a scream cut off, drowned out the dull concussive boom of an explosive tag.

"Don't be an idiot," Sakura-chan said sharply. "We're genin. The best thing we can do is go get help."

"She's right," said Sasuke. "Keep up," he added, and whirled, darting through the dimly lit rows with unerring accuracy.

Outside, the night blazed with flames from the firepits burning out of control, scattered across the ground. Dark figures darted to and fro, and the ground heaved as shinobi summoned water or earth or fire jutsu. Someone had set the command tent on fire. Naruto had just a moment to wonder what had happened to Desk-shinobi and his shiny wooden desk and neat stacks of paper before he plunged after Sasuke, ducking a stray kunai that whizzed past his head with just centimeters to spare. Something large and dark flew past with just a flash of light to betray its passing, and only belatedly did Naruto realize it was a body, the katana protruding from its chest having sliced through the shinobi's bones as easily as it did his armor.

In the chaos of the fire-torn battle and the shadows thrown by the flames, Naruto couldn't tell ally from enemy - both sides wore the same Kiri-style flak jacket, and Naruto's eyes could only catch the blur of movement. Metal on metal clanged near his ear, and he flinched back instinctively

Then they crashed into the forest and plunged back into darkness. He caught just flashes of Sasuke's sandals, and his grey fur-cloak glowed eerily in the moonlight filtering in faintly from above the trees. He threw a glance behind him in time to catch the flash of fear on Sakura-chan's pale face as she stumbled. Naruto jerked back towards her, but she caught her footing and snapped, "Don't - just go!"

Naruto turned back around, but almost crashed into Sasuke, who had stopped short at the treeline.

"What the hell, bastard," Naruto hissed.

"What is that?" Sakura-chan demanded, skidding up behind them.

Where only open water had stretched out before the island, now a huge shape loomed silently, cutting through the waves. It was a ship, maybe three times the size of the merchant ship they'd hitchhiked into the ocean on, sleek where the other was bulky.

"That's a Kiri warship," Sasuke muttered. "Shit. We have to get out of here."

If they hadn't been in such deep, deep trouble and if Naruto hadn't panicked, he might have yelled at Sasuke for swearing because Itachi-sensei definitely would have at least glared at him for it. He'd never seen a warship before, but that thing - that thing was built for destruction.

Sand turned to water beneath their feet as they streaked across the beach to the ocean, and then they were gone, leaving behind the distant shouts and clash of metal and blooms of raw chakra. Sasuke darted around a dark blob, and as he jumped over it, Naruto recognized the flak jacket and realized it was a man, bobbing in the waves face down. Sakura-chan's half-choked inhale told him when she discovered the same.

Although Sasuke didn't stop his headlong sprint even as they sped onto the open water, Naruto could hear Sakura-chan's breathing growing ragged. "Wait, Shi - " Naruto called, turning back again to check on Sakura.

The ocean exploded beneath his feet and Naruto lost his grip on his chakra, flying backwards and crashing through the surface of the waves. He inhaled and swallowed a mouthful of water instead of air, the cold and saltiness sending a shock through his system before he caught himself, twisting back around towards the faint glint of the moon. Even underwater, he heard Sakura's yelp, high and alarmed, and the bloom of Sasuke's katon glowed through the watery haze before Naruto clawed his way back to the surface.

He burst back through the water. He hacked, eyes and lungs burning from the sting of the saltwater, and hauled himself upright as Sasuke hurled a brace of shuriken at the kunoichi looming over Naruto. She dodged almost indolently, swaying between the shuriken easily, and Sakura-chan backpedalled furiously as the Kiri kunoichi turned on her.

Naruto growled, palmed a kunai, and pounced at her back.

"No!" Sasuke shouted, and too late Naruto saw the trap he'd been baited into, that Sasuke had seen.

The kunoichi whipped around too fast for Naruto to anticipate, but instead of a sword she brandished a fistful of water. Unable to stop his forward momentum, Naruto crashed into the water face first as more streamed up to her hand from the roiling waves.

"Roku!" Sakura-chan cried

Though he braced himself, he breathed in instinctively. He instantly steeled himself against the burn of water in his lungs, but to his surprise, air rushed in easily. Naruto tried to twist, to duck and get away, but the water weighed on his limbs and dragged him down, until he could only move a little, just enough to know he wasn't paralyzed. "You bastard!" he howled, shocking himself at how intelligible his voice came out.

The kunoichi glanced down and sideways at him pityingly. "Oh, darling," she drawled. "I can assure you that I'm purebred. What orphanage did the rebels pull you out of, little mongrel, that you have only a number as a name?"

Naruto clenched his kunai a little tighter and glowered. "Shut up!" he snapped. "Who the hell d'you think you are, huh?" At the edge of his vision, Sasuke shut his eyes, and Naruto wildly wondered why he hadn't gotten sunglasses or goggles or something like Neji or Hinata-chan because he looked real stupid, closing his eyes in the middle of a battle.

The kunoichi smiled benevolently, a pleased tilt to her lips. "I am Mayoke Kichirou, firstborn and heiress to the Mayoke Clan - "

"That's a boy's name," Naruto blurted.

"Katon: Hibashiro!" Sasuke shouted, and a blast of fire roared at Mayoke.

A water clone rose in front of her to take the blast of the fire, collapsing back into the waves in a hiss of steam as soon as the flames abated. "How rude," Mayoke muttered. "Utterly pointless - " She jerked away abruptly as Sakura-chan's flurry of kunai hissed through the cloud of steam.

Once her hand left Naruto's watery prison, it collapsed around him, and he wasted no time darting away, landing in front of his team in a low crouch. "That was super smart, you guys," he informed them, and Sakura-chan pursed her lips like she always did when she wanted to smile but had to be serious.

Mayoke straightened, and strode forward through the remnants of the mist like some sort of oni. "You have only postponed the inevitable," she sneered, and for a moment Naruto was vividly reminded of Neji at his most jerk-ish.

"We need to get out of here," Sasuke said under his breath.

"At least one of us needs to," Sakura-chan corrected. Naruto whipped around to stare at her, but she stayed crouched in a ready position, kunai held in a backhanded grip. "Help won't come unless we get one of the sensei, and it's better that one of us make it than none of us."

"She's right." Sasuke's tone was grim.

"Yeah," Naruto agreed reluctantly. Well, he didn't actually intend to let any of them not make it out. But on that teensy tiny chance they couldn't beat the kunoichi, Naruto would make sure Sakura-chan and Sasuke got away okay.

"Defense Formation Seven," Sasuke growled. "Anyone sees a chance to break away from the fight and think they can make it to camp, take it."

Mayoke charged, and the water reared up behind her as great sharks leaping from the ocean. Sakura-chan leapt backwards, kunai in one hand and a coil of wire in the other. Sasuke darted in front of Naruto, hands blurring through hand seals. "Katon: Housenka no jutsu!" he muttered.

Kage bunshin no jutsu! Naruto let his chakra explode, and his clones burst into existence, surrounding them as Sasuke's fireballs exploded harmlessly against the kunoichi's sharks. Sakura-chan hurled her kunai through the smokescreen created from the steam, and at the same time, Naruto henged his clones, just like he had the day before.

"Your tricks won't fool me a second time," Mayoke warned as her sharks plunged back below the waves.

"Go!" hissed Naruto, shoving one of his Sakura-clones, and she - he? it? - grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away from the battle full-tilt. "Wait, not me," he yelped, twisting around wildly back to look for his team, but he couldn't see them in the shuffle of the rest of the

"Sorry boss," said the Sakura-clone, the words looking really weird coming out of her mouth. "You wanted us to get all of us out of there."

"Yeah, but after I know the others got away!" Naruto argued. "C'mon, we gotta go back."

"No can do," said his Sasuke-clone.

Ridiculous. Ganged up on by his own clones. "I'm your maker!" Naruto objected, swinging a wild fist at Sasuke-clone's stupid smug face. "I'm the boss! You have to listen to me."

"Interesting," said a new voice, and Naruto whipped around, even as his heart sank. "You're the one popping out all these clones, then."

"What's it to you?" Naruto snapped, and his Sakura-clone instantly socked him in the shoulder.

"You idiot!" it seethed, exactly like the real Sakura-chan.

The newcomer wore Kiri's flak jacket over the basic chuunin-jounin greys, and a shock of green-brown hair fell over his hitai-ate. He couldn't be older than Itachi-sensei, but he wore a katana over his shoulder and eyed Naruto with amusement, like Naruto was a puppy that had done something particularly dumb. "Sensei, I found the one doing the clones," he called, raising his voice a little, and Naruto whirled to look behind him.

"Good." Another, older kunoichi loomed behind Naruto, and he swallowed down a startled shriek at her approach. She stared at him with the same derision as Mayoke had, only with more malice. "Don't let him get away like your teammate almost did. She will be corrected for that failure," she added, almost as an afterthought, and Naruto caught the younger shinobi flinch out of the corner of his eye.

"Hey, leave her alone," Naruto blurted. Both Kiri shinobi and Naruto's own clones turned to stare at him incredulously. "What?" he said defensively. "She was pretty scary and strong and she did catch me for a little bit."

The sensei ignored him, just like Zabuza-sensei did all the time, and turned like she was certain he wouldn't run away. "Clean this up," she ordered as she stalked off.

Naruto did not appreciate being the object of the 'cleaning up.' He didn't even like to take baths. He glared at the shinobi as he unsheathed his sword, swinging it in front of him in some complicated manner that Naruto didn't really pay attention to except to make sure that blade wasn't coming anywhere near him. "Don't touch me," he warned, narrowing his eyes. If it was just this kid, teen probably, Naruto could get away, easy. He just had to make a bunch more clones and then no way would the guy catch him.

Except, when Naruto tried to form the hand seal, he couldn't move. And his startled cry of, "Hey!" came out more like, "Hhhhhh!" because he couldn't move his mouth either. What was going on? Neither of the Kiri nin had come near enough to touch him, and he didn't remember anything poisoning him like the venoms Temari-nee talked about, that Suna shinobi dipped their senbon into. All that was happening was that teen shinobi swinging his sword in Naruto's general direction ten meters away.

"Like it?" the guy asked lightly, stepping forward slowly. "It's a genjutsu my clan is famous for. Utautori - you've probably heard of us. Though, you probably didn't learn much about the noble clans in the low caste Academy classes."

Naruto had very little idea of what the Utautori shinobi was saying, because even though Zabuza-sensei had mentioned that there were 'casts' in Kiri society, he had never actually seen a shinobi wearing a cast. What he did understand was that Utautori was insulting him. He growled low in his throat, because that much at least didn't need him to move his mouth, and strained against his invisible bonds. He tried reaching for that floaty anger in the back of his mind, the one with the chakra that wasn't his, but he couldn't reach that either.

"It's no use," Utautori said, stopping again when he was just two lengths of his blade away from Naruto. "I weave the genjutsu with my sword. I won't tell you exactly how, because, well, right now we're enemies." With a quick one-two jab of the blade, he dispelled Naruto's clone teammates. He swept the blade back over his shoulder into its sheath, but though Naruto yanked and and yanked on his arms and his legs, Naruto still couldn't move.

Utautori slipped a coil of wire from a back pouch and stepped forward unhurriedly, pulling Naruto's unresisting arms in front of him. "That was clever, with the clones," he added, like he and Naruto were sitting down for dinner and a conversation, instead of him tying Naruto's wrists together like a prisoner of war. "You might even have gotten away, but Kiyoshi - that's Harada Kiyoshi - is probably the best sensor in our graduating class. He sensed the difference between your and your clones' chakra and theirs. Pity he's low caste stock. He could've made chuunin before even me."

Naruto made an indignant noise as Utautori swung him over his shoulder like a sack of flour. "Oh, I know," said Utautori. "Everyone likes to say that caste is not the end-all. Look at Kichirou-chan. Not even her Mayoke blood got her a promotion in the last round. And you - it's not too late to switch sides, you know. You'll have to do a little reeducation, of course, but you're young and misguided. Kiri will take you back."

Naruto regained control over his mouth just in time to yelp as the Kiri shinobi jumped, leaping up from the ocean's surface. He twisted his head so instead of just the shinobi's flak jacket he could see the sleek deck of the Kiri warship.

Ah.

He was, as Zabuza-sensei would say, so fucked .

Naruto jolted out of a dazed half-sleep as the metal grate clanged shut, and Sakura-chan thumped down onto the slimy wood beside him. "M'fine," she slurred. "G'back t' sleep."

Naruto squinted through the gloom, just barely able to make out the glint of her hair, lank and matted with blood. But though her face was bruised, and her wrists where the wire had dug into them, she seemed no more hurt than when they'd taken her. "Sensei'll come for us," he assured her for what had to be the hundredth time since Utautori had dropped him in this cell in the warship's belly practically on top of his teammates.

"How?" Sakura-chan sighed, closing her eyes. "Even if one of your clones got away, he wouldn't be able to find us."

"Or take on an entire Kiri warship," muttered Sasuke from the dank corner he'd claimed early on. Blood and filth spotted the bandage wrapped around his abdomen beneath his ripped shirt. His face had lost the little tan lent to him by the sun above Kiri's oceans, giving him a ghostly pallor. The chakra suppression seal inked on his forehead crouched there like a great dark spider.

Naruto couldn't think of anything to say to that, because his eyelids were drifting shut again. Funny, he didn't think being a prisoner would be tiring at all since they couldn't move around much in their cell, but now all he wanted was to do was sleep.

The cell door slammed open with a loud crash, and as he jolted awake, Naruto knew he'd been asleep for at least a few hours because although the hold stayed dark, a new crink in his neck protested his abrupt movement. Sakura-chan shrank back against the back wall, and Sasuke glowered soundlessly from his corner.

"Hi," said Utautori apologetically. Naruto squinted at him blearily, but couldn't really see much besides his silhouette. "I do feel bad about bothering you, but it's been almost a week and we need answers."

"We don't know anything," Naruto scowled defiantly, but he didn't move because he was still mostly in front of his teammates and Utautori was definitely here to grab one of them for interrogation again and hell if Naruto would let him take either Sakura-chan or Sasuke, especially because Sasuke had grown quieter and quieter each time he woke up and Naruto strongly believed he was bleeding out under the bandages even though he didn't say anything about it.

"We don't have to do this, you know," Utautori said conversationally, leaning against the doorframe. "We just need a couple names. The jounin or captain in charge of Gull Hill. Your sensei, or whoever lured you out of the village. Any other bases that you know of. I can get you out of this pit, find you some real food."

Naruto's stomach rumbled. Ramen. He wanted ramen so bad. "We don't know anything," Naruto repeated anyways. He knew Utautori'd choose him as long as neither of the others drew his attention, because the first day he accidentally told Utautori that they'd had a jounin-sensei and apparently that was important because of the whole 'not every genin team has a jounin sensei' thing that Sasuke had literally told him the day before and the Kiri shinobi had very quickly and probably accurately decided that Naruto was their best bet to get intel.

Utautori sighed, genuinely disappointed, and Naruto couldn't help but flinch against the floor a little. "What are they offering you? Kiri is forgiving. You can still be a shinobi. Probably nothing higher than a genin after this little stunt, but there's nothing more the rebels can give you, and when we wipe them out - " He shrugged. "Never mind, then," he said. "You'll change your mind soon enough. Come along - you will walk or be dragged."

Naruto didn't plan on making things easy for him, so he stayed where he was, lying half-sprawled on the kind of slimy floor. It maybe also was because he couldn't move very well because he hadn't eaten in possibly two days, and even then it was like a bit of bread that was a little too hard to really be called bread. His legs just really felt like jelly and his arms weren't much better, given that they were tied up in front of him and everything.

Utautori's face suddenly filled his vision as the Kiri shinobi reached down to grab him by the arm, hauling him bodily upright and dragging him backwards out the cell. Naruto tried to dig in his heels, but Utautori was taller, heavier, and hadn't been starved for almost a week and hefted him easily.

Sasuke made an outraged growling noise from his corner of the cell, and jerked as if to lunge, half-sunken eyes glaring out of his gaunt face.

"Let go of him!" Sakura-chan snapped, but she didn't try to jump Utautori or go for the open doorway, because that's what had gotten her the gash on her head the first day of their captivity. "Roku!" As Utautori dragged him out, Naruto's hazy mind prodded at him insistently: don't let them find out who Sasuke is. Don't tell them who the sensei are. Hana-ha isn't here .

Naruto stared up blankly the cell door clanged shut behind them, and the ceiling of the ship bumped past dizzyingly as Utautori wound unerringly through the narrow passageways. Left turn. Right turn. Straight for maybe ten meters. Right turn. Naruto had been dragged down this path three times already and he knew what was at the end of it.

Only, this time, the barren wooden room wasn't vacant and the solid metal chair they usually chained him down to was already occupied. "You bastards!" snarled the kunoichi, surging up from the chair in a rattle of chains. "He's just a kid!"

A kid? Naruto twisted around to look, but he didn't see any kid. Then he caught sight of the kunoichi, with her dark hair shorn close to her skull and fierce eyes glaring out from a patchy pale and bruised face. Ugly black-blue bruises and streams of dried blood painted her naked flesh, and as soon as he glanced over he averted his gaze again to leave her with as much dignity as possible in a situation like this. Only then did he realize he recognized her - Bara, the kunoichi from Gull Hill.

"Shut up," said Mayoke, backhanding her carelessly across the face. The force of the blow sent Bara's head snapping sideways, and the chains around her wrist snapped taut as she jolted.

"Hey, don't hit her," Naruto slurred, swimming laboriously up through the fog of hunger and the place that he went to when they tried to get information out of him so he wouldn't actually tell them anything.

"Oh, whelp," Mayoke sighed. "You should worry about yourself."

Naruto had just enough presence of mind to flail his legs a little because that did not sound good, or even anything like the kind-of-hard-but-not-too-hard slaps Mayoke had battered him with the first three times he got dragged out for interrogation. Utautori swung him around with embarrassing ease and for a brief moment he sailed through the air. Then the hard surface of the table knocked the breath out of his lungs, and for a handful of seconds he could only blink stupidly at the ceiling. In the background, he could hear Bara shouting, then lower blur of sound of Mayoke's cool responses and the burn of rope against his ankles.

"This will hurt," Utautori said apologetically, pushing Naruto's head down when he tried to crane around to look. Rope cinched around his neck, and he choked. Utautori reached over Naruto and slit the bindings on his wrists. Naruto yanked his wrists away but the Kiri shinobi caught them again easily, and tied them to the corners one at a time, splaying Naruto out like a pinned bug. He forced Naruto's closest hand open, flat against the surface of the table.

"Kiyoshi. Make yourself useful and get us some snacks or something, rotblood. Gods know you'd go easy on your traitor friends," Mayoke said, and the sneer in her voice caught Naruto by surprise. He twisted around to try to see what the third teammate looked like because he'd never been in the same room as him before and only caught a flash of black hair as he slipped out the door. "The little one's going to squeal like a pig."

"Leave him alone!" Bara shouted again, her voice rough and furious.

"Names, traitor, and this can all stop," Mayoke said boredly.

Naruto couldn't see or hear Bara's response, but he assumed it was a glare that meant "go to hell" because he heard the impact of flesh on flesh and the rattle of metal as Mayoke slapped her again.

"Do you know how many bones a human body has?" Mayoke asked conversationally. "You and I have around 220. This little cur here probably has around 250 still. Most of them are in the hands."

Without warning, Utautori slammed the hilt of a kunai down on the tip of Naruto's smallest finger.

Pain exploded in his finger. Agony lanced up his hand and burned up his arm and a raw scream ripped its way from Naruto's throat. He jerked mindlessly against the ropes and gagged as the one around his throat yanked him back.

"Roku!" Bata shouted, and above the roar of blood pounding in his ears Naruto heard the scrabble of metal against wood as she struggled.

"M'okay," panted Naruto reassuringly, though he still couldn't catch his breath. His breath came in quick pants, and he forced himself to take deep breaths instead as he braced against the table. He rolled his eyeballs all the way to the side, but he still couldn't see her. "Don't tell 'em anything." His finger throbbed, and he he tried to fade back into his mind like Shisui-sensei said to do if they ever got interrogated.

"Ah, now you're making things worse for yourself," Utautori admonished, and Naruto blinked up at him with eyes watering from the pain.

"That's one," said Mayoke. "Just a demonstration. We'll do one more and see if you feel like talking."

Naruto muffled a shriek as the second joint of his littlest finger exploded into pain, realizing the meaning of her words too late. He yanked at his hand and strained against the ropes holding him down, but Utaurori gripped his wrist still and Naruto's hand may as well have been trapped in quicksand. White starbursts exploded across his vision and he sucked in air desperately. He didn't realize his hearing had fuzzed out until it trickled back gradually.

"...the jounin or captain in charge of Gull Hill," Mayoke repeated, almost bored. "Name, or the whelp breaks a third bone."

Even if they had been asking him, Naruto honestly couldn't remember the name of the jounin-in-charge. He knew the captain's name, of course, and all the sensei, but no way was he ever going to give them up. They were going to come for them, he knew it. They had to.

Naruto's pulse thudded through the silence. Gods, he just wanted the pain to stop. Make it stop, make it stop .

Naruto reached blindly for the anger that had hovered just beyond the back of his mind because it fixed him before, it could make the pain stop, and only then did he realize it wasn't there. His probing hit only chakra seal's thick, muffling cloud. No matter how desperately he stretched and scrabbled at it, it rebuffed his efforts. "No," he muttered aloud. "No, no, no no!"

"Roku," Bara rasped. "I'm sorry."

Sorry for what?

The kunai slammed down again.

This time, he didn't scream, because there was no air in his lungs to scream with. His mouth flew open, gaping soundlessly as his legs strained against the ropes and the agony of the now three broken bones. His hand brushed against the table, and the white blast of pain that followed shorted out his vision. He toppled into the pain sucking him in and he knew nothing.

Naruto blinked awake to the throb of his mangled fingers. A face leaned over him, not quite looking at him, but the bonds around his wrists loosened. Instinctively, Naruto drew his hands back to his chest, but strong hands caught him and tied them in front of him once again. He bit back a whimper.

He blinked the blur from his eyes and recognized the third Kiri teammate, Harada Kiyoshi - taller than Temari-nee, but he sort of hunched in on himself like Hinata-chan when she was being just Hinata-chan and not Kyuu. He worked silently, slicing through first the rope around Naruto's throat, then his legs.

Naruto tried to swing his legs over the edge, maybe make a break for it and throw himself over the side of the ship and get help even though he'd probably die. But his legs wouldn't cooperate and just flopped to the side. He coughed and groaned as the pain blazed white hot through his fingers again. He twisted to look at his hand and wished he hadn't. Three of his fingers had swollen up like blood sausages, all twisted and bent at awkward angles and oh gods was that white thing a bone? He squeezed his eyes shut again.

Something touched his finger, sending bolts of agony through his hand, and he bit back a whimper as he flinched away.

"They're finished, for today." Naruto cracked his eyes open just enough to see Harada, who didn't look at him as he spoke. His words sounded discordant to Naruto, distant, and with a strange accent.

"Ba - " started Naruto, and his too-slow mind reminded him he wasn't supposed to tell these people her name. "Where is she?" he rasped instead, the words sticking in his throat.

"The rebel traitor is fine," Harada said monotonously. "She did not talk. Interrogation will continue tomorrow."

Naruto's indignation was drowned out by mixed dread and relief. No more new pain today.

Harada reached for his hand again, and this time Naruto let him wrap a small strip of cloth around the first broken finger, and his vision went white for a moment as he tugged it around the second.

"No splints," the older boy explained without meeting his eyes. "This will keep the bones in place." One by agonizing one, Harada bound each finger to the next. Naruto gritted his teeth as his vision went white, his unbroken hand clenching and unclenching each time his fingers throbbed. When he was finished, Naruto dropped his head back against the table and struggled to breathe, staring up blankly.

Hazily, he watched the Kiri nin move around his table silently, and then reach over him. Even still, he huffed in surprise as he was half-dragged, half-lifted against the shinobi's chest. Naruto's head bumped against Harada's shoulder as he was carried out of the room.

"You're different," Naruto slurred, and even in his half-delirious state he felt Harada stiffen. "Why're you helping 'em?"

"I am a loyal shinobi of Kiri," Harada retorted mechanically. "I will follow orders. I will not betray my country or my village as you have."

"You're not like them," Naruto insisted. "They did this to me." He sort of waved the hand with the broken fingers at Harada and instantly regretted it as the jarring movement sent white starbursts across his vision, and he curled inward as best he could. "She called you 'rotblood,'" Naruto remembered, panting against the pain.

"I was unfortunate to be born to a family that once turned against Kiri," Harada said, his voice suddenly cold and hard. "Their sins are mine to bear. I will not make the same mistake, and you should not either."

"I'm ten," Naruto confessed, and this time Harada stopped short in the middle of the second left turn.

"Ten," Harada repeated faintly, staring down at him. Something in his eyes changed, but with his mind fuzzy and slower than it should be, though Sasuke would probably argue that he was plenty slow already, Naruto couldn't figure out exactly what it was.

"Mhmm," Naruto agreed fuzzily. He craned his neck up put his face closer to Harada's, and for a moment, he saw something vulnerable in the teen's face before it vanished once again under a blank mask. "C'n I tell you a secret?" Naruto asked. "Y'can tell anyone. They won't believe you, n'that's proof you're not one of them."

Harada eyed him warily. Naruto peered back up at him. Why was the Kiri nin looking at him, again? Oh, yeah, because he said the thing about the secret. Wariness edged Harada's tone when he asked, "What is it?"

Naruto's foggy mind churned, because he hadn't exactly thought this far ahead, but he needed something super scary probably but he wasn't obviously couldn't say anything important. What was the scariest person he knew? What was the craziest thing he could say that was at least kind of true? Something about the captain? The captain was pretty terrifying, and probably even scarier to someone who had to fight him.

"My sensei," Naruto slurred, "is Raijuu." The captain was basically the sensei of the sensei, except for Zabuza-sensei because they were both old so it would be a little weird, so the captain was like his grand-sensei. And the captain was scary as hell but he and all the other sensei would rescue them, Naruto really believed that. But anyways the point was that Raijuu was the captain who was kind of like his sensei.

Harada frowned, but even with his mind only half-working like this Naruto could see the caution and disbelief and wariness warring in his eyes. "Raijuu doesn't have a genin team," he said warily. "We have intel on him. He's an Anbu captain or solo operative."

"Mm," Naruto muttered, beginning to lose his grip on consciousness. "He's coming for us. And he's pissed."

"Roku!"

Naruto must have blacked out again, because Sakura-chan's voice sent him jarring back to the present. And, he realized with a pained grunt, back to his throbbing fingers that drowned out the ache in his belly and the lightheadedness and the throat that was so dry it dragged against itself. "Mmph," he said, and tried to roll over before realizing Harada was still carrying him.

He lolled over just his head to see Sakura-chan with her still-bound hands braced against the ground as she crouched in the corner in front of Sasuke, who was glaring so hard that if he could summon his swirly eyes from sheer willpower he definitely would have. Naruto's heels touched the ground first. He sucked in a breath as Harada lowered him the rest of the way to the ground, clutching his mangled fingers closer to himself.

"What did you do to him?" Sasuke demanded, his voice a low rasp in his throat.

"The price for his and your comrade's refusal to cooperate," Harada said, monotone, as he slid his arms out from under Naruto and stood. "Nine broken bones in the fingers of his left hand."

Sakura-chan sucked in a gasp in mingled horror and fury, but Naruto flapped his uninjured hand at her reassuringly. "Not him," he explained. "'S fine." He blinked up blearily at Harada, who stared back at him with unfathomable eyes. Without another word, the Kiri shinobi turned and left, and the cell door clanged shut behind him.

Instantly, Sakura-chan darted forward, dropping to her knees at his side and reaching for his hand.

"No," Naruto slurred, pulling them away as best he could without letting them hurt much more than they already did, with little success. "Don't touch. He tied them f'r me. He's 'kay. I told 'im Raijuu is our sensei, and that he's coming for us."

Sakura-chan sucked in a harsh breath and recoiled, eyes wide. "Why would you do that?" she demanded, fear and anger sharpening her voice.

"It's 'kay," Naruto repeated, trying to make her understand, but it was hard when the inside of his head was filled with cotton and pointy rocks. "No one'll believe him if he tells."

"N - Roku, how would you know that?" Sakura-chan asked, hands hovering just above Naruto's before letting them drop in front of her again.

"He didn't hurt me," Naruto insisted, straining his eyes to meet hers in the gloom because this was important. "The others don't like him. Called him 'rotblood.'"

"Blood of traitors, rotten to the core," Sakura-chan translated helpfully. "Sensei told us that, remember? But, Roku, that doesn't mean anything," she said, but kind of gently probably because Naruto had just been tortured and his hand hurt very much. "This is a Shirei-bu team we're dealing with. He's probably loyal to Kirigakure no matter how they treat him."

"Tha's not fair," Naruto pointed out.

"That's normal," Sasuke corrected in a gravelly voice. "Look at Ni and Kyuu."

Naruto squinted at Sasuke's corner. "What about Ni and Kyuu?" he asked, confused.

Sasuke rolled his eyes halfheartedly. "Ni was basically born to become Kyuu's personal servant and bodyguard."

"What?" Naruto frowned, concerned. "That doesn't make any sense. Kyuu calls him 'nii-san;' he's not her servant." Maybe the captivity and probable blood loss had finally gotten to his teammate. Sasuke's pale face was drawn beneath his rebreather, and his throat kept bobbing, so Naruto could tell he wasn't getting enough water.

"That's noble clans for you," Sasuke muttered. "Big on blood and birth order. Did you think Ni normally uses those kind of honorifics for people younger than him?"

Now that he thought about it, Naruto did think it was kind of weird, but Neji'd been like that since they met during the Fall so he'd thought of it as just a Neji quirk, like the way he kind of sneered at Naruto when he was in a bad mood. He didn't mean it, obviously, but he couldn't help it because he was naturally kind of a jerk. He made a mental note to ask him and probably yell at him about it because Hinata-chan was super nice and didn't try to make him do anything.

He eyed Sasuke, half-hidden behind Sakura-chan. His teammate had slumped further down the wall, with no effort to shove himself upright. The dark shadows under his eyes stood out starkly against his bloodless face, and his hands were clamped around his middle as best as he could manage with them tied. "You don't look so good," Naruto noted.

Sasuke levered him with an unimpressed glare and Sakura-chan made a noise like an angry hedgehog. "He's been stabbed, you got tortured, neither of you look good!" she yowled. Or she would have, but her voice cracked halfway and trailed off into a sob.

Naruto stared up at her and her eyes were a little shiny like she would be crying but wouldn't because she couldn't actually afford to lose the water. "Go-chan," he said unhappily, reaching up with his unhurt hand. "Don't cry, Go-Go-chan. I'm okay! It doesn't even hurt that much."

"I'm not crying, you idiot," she scowled, smacking at him halfheartedly, but her lip was trembling and even Naruto could tell she was really scared but trying not to show it.

"Go," said Sasuke, and both Naruto and Sakura-chan turned to look at him. He honestly looked pretty terrible propped up against the cell wall. Even in the darkness, Naruto could make out the stain spreading slowly across the bandage around his middle under his hands, a little bigger than when he'd left the cell, and Sasuke's eyes were hooded, as if it were taking a lot of energy to keep them open. "Don't worry about the idiot," he said.

"Hey!" Naruto protested dramatically, making a show of outrage as Sakura-chan choked out a laugh.

"We're alive," Sasuke rasped, and Sakura-chan nodded tremulously. He closed his eyes again, so still that he could have been a corpse if not for the faint rise and fall of his chest.

Neither Naruto nor Sakura-chan pointed out that that would probably change very soon if Sasuke didn't get real medical attention.

"Go-Go-chan?"

"Hmm?"

"Can you tell us a story?"

A pause. A sigh. "Now?"

It was dark, nothing to mark the passage of time, nothing to light their cell but the flickering lantern halfway down the hallway, a full ten meters away. "It's cold," Naruto admitted, his voice small and a little more vulnerable than he was comfortable with. "You remember them all," he continued, his voice slurring a little, "and Shi - "

"Don't speak for me," muttered Sasuke without any real venom. He'd slid down and now his head rested in Sakura-chan's lap. Naruto had draped himself over her lower legs on her opposite side, staring up at the dark ceiling.

"Shut it, bastard, I'm trying to talk," Naruto grumbled. "Shi likes your stories too," he informed Sakura-chan.

Sasuke grunted but didn't protest. In the brief silence, Naruto could hear the shallow wheeze of his breath, in and out, in and out.

"Well, okay," Sakura-chan relented, the ghost of of a smile on her face. She paused for a moment and Naruto closed his eyes, letting her words wash over him. "Did you hear about the assault on the Yonaguni stronghold? Twelve teams besieged a tower where two teams were being held for interrogation.

"Those two teams had been captured after defending their base even after it had been overrun by the enemy outnumbering them three to one. Three days and three nights they refused to speak, to offer the information that would damn ten times their number, no matter how much blood, how much pain their captors drew from them, in the tower littered with the bones of their comrades.

"Four more days and four more nights passed as their compatriots surrounded the tower, and on the fifth, after a hard-fought battle, they finally breached its walls. Inside, they found all eight captured shinobi, injured but alive, and two dead Kiri guards who had tried to murder them as the others escaped.

"The story of the Yonaguni stronghold is not the birth of a hero or the affirmation of a legend, but a commemoration of strength, of courage and of trust. It is a reminder that we are part of something bigger - and that something takes care of its own."

For such a big boat, the Kiri warship seemed very empty. There was the Team Byakko cell, which had its own hallway and a solid door at the opposite end that stayed closed so they couldn't see anyone passing by.

As Utautori dragged Naruto out that door what must have been the next morning, they passed nobody on their way to the interrogation room, and though Naruto strained his ears, he heard only the creaking of the ship and the heavy sloshing of waved against its sides.

Bara glared in sullen silence from her chair. Naruto stared at the ceiling as Utautori strapped him down, taking deep breaths and fading back into his mind while trying not to think too hard about his mangled hand and the pain that would probably be even worse today. The hard surface of the table had become worryingly familiar pressed against his bruised back.

Mayoke leaned against the wall behind Bara's chair, sharpening a kunai languidly. Her eyes tracked Naruto interestedly, and he scowled at her. Next to her, Harada hunched, one wrist clasped in the other hand, studying the floor just in front of his feet.

"Breaking your bones is of course something we can revisit," Utautori told him conversationally. But today, it's time to try something new." Naruto flinched back a little at the ominous tone. "Every child of the Mist learns to fear the water. Every shinobi of the Mist learns to conquer that fear. You, my young friend - we will reteach you that fear."

"Kiyoshi, fetch the buckets," Mayoke ordered imperiously. "We need to get this started for real."

Buckets didn't sound so bad. Buckets were for like throwing up in and throwing up wasn't the worst thing that could happen. Naruto could throw up already from the pain still thrumming through his hand, jarred when Utautori had grabbed it. Naruto wiggled around a little, but the ropes didn't give him much room. He could, however, see Harada, whose gaze darted at Naruto for just a moment, guilty and reluctant and resolved all at once.

Naruto didn't think the Kiri nin had told anyone what Naruto had spilled the night before in a pain-induced haze. More concerningly, he carried two buckets of what looked like just water.

Naruto jerked away instinctively, but Utautori caught him by the hair and pressed his head against the table. "Good thing you're already wearing these bandages," he said, patting the linen over Naruto's mouth absently. "That'll make this a lot easier."

"Make what a lot easier?" Naruto mumbled. His head felt sharp and fuzzy at the same time, but his instincts blared warnings at him and screamed at him to run, get away, now, now, now .

The first trickle of water just dampened Naruto's bandages. He didn't understand what was so bad about it even as Bara shrieked again from across the room, "He's just a kid!"

"Yare, yare," Mayoke sighed. "Stop screaming or we'll pour acid, too."

The water didn't stop. Naruto snorted out involuntarily, but the water poured inexorably down his nose. He swallowed and choked, jerking desperately against the ropes holding him down but the water burned down his throat.

His eyes watered, but Naruto clenched his throat hard, fighting to hold his breath. No big deal. Naruto could handle a little water. Zabuza-sensei'd had half his organs cut out of him. The captain and Shisui-sensei had both each lost an eye, and Shisui-sensei'd had a lot more happen to him that he never talked about but was the reason he sometimes stared off at nothing like there was an enemy there or activated his swirly eye for no reason, except more complicated than Sasuke's, but which no one ever talked about, so that was another secret Naruto had to remember not to tell. A couple busted fingers and a lot of water was nothing in comparison.

But despite his resolve, his lungs screamed, and when he couldn't hold his breath any longer he inhaled and threw himself sideways desperately. The rope across his throat yanked him back and he choked again, caught under the merciless stream of water.

His throat burned, his nose and lungs screamed agony, and the inside of Naruto's head must have been on fire.

Air, he needed air, he couldn't breathe . His legs kicked, though this time involuntarily. He was going to die like this. He was going to drown. His fingers scrabbled at the table, sending jolts of pain up his arm as his broken fingers hit the unforgiving surface.

The water kept coming. The distant wooden planks above his head blurred, and as his vision went black, above the pain and the panic, the last thing Naruto felt was relief.

He made it. He hadn't given anyone away.

It was over.

He came to with a gasp and all the pain ripped through his body anew. His vision blurred into focus - the damp wooden ceiling, the flash of metal as Utautori flipped a kunai in his hand end over end. He sucked in a desperate breath, and the sour stench of urine and the heavy metallic tang of blood hanging heavy in the air hit the back of his throat before the movement set his lungs burning once again. He coughed desperately, leaning to the side as much as he could

"Ah, he's back," Utautori said pleasantly.

"Talk, or we start round two on the little rotblood," Mayoke ordered.

"Don't," Naruto forced out, his voice only half-intelligible and thick and waterlogged. Fear of the water warred with fear for his pack and lost.

A pause. "I'm sorry, Roku," Bara whispered brokenly.

Naruto had just a panicked second to gasp in a burning lungful of air before the first drops of water splashed down again. He bucked against the table, writhed against Utautori's hands, but he was too weak and the shinobi unyielding as stone.

He struggled. He drowned. He faded into the darkness.

He woke up again.

"Round three," Mayoke announced coldly, and briefly Naruto wondered if this is what it felt like to hate. Naruto was pathetically glad they'd stopped asking him any questions, because if he'd had any voice left to beg with he would have. He lost all sense of time, lost his hearing but for the rush of blood in his ears; all he knew was the unrelenting water.

The fifth time he fell backwards into the black, something changed. This time, Naruto stared upwards as he fell and with a kind of detached curiosity watched the seal burning white in the darkness above him - the chakra suppression seal, floating high above him. Its pure white flames licked against the black, and Naruto's eyes traced its form interestedly. He noticed abruptly that his fall had slowed, that his body was cradled in the thick wool of the barrier produced by the suppression seal. Slowly, as if through a heavy fog, he sank, and gradually the flickering, searing light of the seal was drowned out by the fog and he was left alone in the darkness.

He realized then that he was floating not in the wool-fog thing, but on the surface of water that stretched out until it disappeared into the yawning darkness. He glanced to the side and saw thick bars stretching up into the black from beneath the water. He sat up, squinting into the darkness beyond the bars, and to his distant surprise, a huge pair of eyes opened and stared back at him.

They were great eyes, terrible eyes, the deep red of blood and alight with malice and hatred and intelligence, and each pupil was as tall as Naruto himself, if he stood on Zabuza-sensei's shoulders. Naruto drowned in them.

"Finally," rumbled a voice that reverberated through Naruto's bones, and as if clothed by fire the massive figure materialized in a blaze of red and uncoiled, rising, rising, rising until he towered high above Naruto.

Naruto's jaw dropped as he took in the long, liquid fur, caught the pointed ears that swivelled and tilted back, the massive paws that braced just behind the bars. Like a bird stretching its wings, a sheathe of tails unfurled behind the creature, burning bright through the darkness. Nine-tails . "Kyuubi," Naruto said stupidly. "You're real."

The eyes rolled derisively. "Not very bright, are you," the fox said, sinking back down to rest its muzzle on its paws. It yawned languidly, baring wicked white teeth.

"What is this place?" Naruto asked, pushing himself up to his feet and taking a couple of cautious steps towards the cage.

"This is you," the fox said simply, watching Naruto's movements with sharp eyes. Its ears tilted towards him and its tails swayed languidly in the ripple of its own chakra, but otherwise it did not move.

Naruto tried to process that, failed, and simply pushed the thought aside. "Why am I here?"

The fox tilted its head. "You're dying," it explained, and its plume of tails settled. What do you want, little kit?"

What did Naruto want?

Naruto thought of his hand, mangled beyond recognition, the table to which he was strapped as the Kiri nin drowned him again and again and again. He thought of Bara, stripped naked and beaten until every inch of her pale flesh turned black and purple and blue. He thought of Sakura with blood matted in her hair and around her wrists and Sasuke with red staining his torso, growing paler and colder and quieter by the day.

Naruto wanted to heal. He wanted to break out, rip free of his restraints and stop the Kiri nin from touching any of them ever again. He wanted to rescue his friends. "Chakra," said Naruto. "I need your chakra. But not too much," he added hastily, because he didn't want to get Gaara-crazy and attack the sensei by mistake when they came for him and his team.

The fox barked a laugh, loud and derisive. "You'll have to do better than that," it purred. "You have your own chakra."

"My chakra's sealed," Naruto argued. "I can't reach it. I tried. I need yours."

"I'm in here." One of its tails flicked to indicate the cage. "Why should I help you?"

Naruto frowned. Everything had a price - Temari-nee had told him that once. "What do you want?" he demanded warily.

Two tails flicked back and forth, trailing fiery afterimages in the wake. "There's a seal there," said the fox, tilting its head up. Naruto followed its gaze and noticed for the first time a huge seal plastered against the front of the bars high above him, as large as the fox's head and ten times as intricate as the chakra suppression seal. "Take it off, and I'll give you enough chakra to burn through any common chakra suppression seal."

Naruto glanced back at the fox uncertainly, but it had lowered its head to its paws once again, eyeing him keenly. The overwhelming hatred still burned there, but Naruto saw something else. Greed. Hope. Calculation.

There was a price to be paid here, but Naruto would not pay it.

He screwed up his face and concentrated, trawling through everything he knew about seals and demons. Admittedly, it was not a lot. "What happens if I die?" he asked conversationally.

The great eyes widened minutely. "Your little friends die," the fox answered smoothly. Its tails swished agitatedly behind it.

Naruto quashed his knee-jerk reaction to shout at the demon fox. "What happens to you?" he corrected.

The fox narrowed its eyes.

"You need me to pull this seal off," Naruto thought aloud. "If you could get out by me dying, you wouldn't have to bother asking me to do it."

In a flash a giant paw lashed out from between the bars, and wicked sharp claws gleaming in the fox's chakra-light slammed down on either side of Naruto as the fox snarled, its ears pressed flat against its skull.

"You need me alive," Naruto realized, staring up at the fox fearlessly. Adrenaline soared through his veins, sharp and heady. "Something happens to you if I die, and you don't want it to happen. Give me your chakra," he said boldly, "or we'll both die here."

The fox glowered down at him. Naruto stood his ground, glaring back at the fox. Unexpectedly, it laughed, lifting its paw and tucking it back against its body. "Well played, kit," it rumbled. "Maybe you're not as dumb as you look." Its eyes slit as its body seemed to glow brighter, and chakra coalesced above its fur. "Take it, then," it growled. "This time I give it to you freely. Take it, and make your enemies bleed. Spill their blood for me. Make them fear and teach them hate."

Naruto opened his mouth to reply and all at once the chakra rushed in, forcing itself down his throat and through his veins. After so many days of chakra deprivation he was unprepared for the rush, for the potent energy, for the fire that was the fox's chakra, and the malice that came with it. He gasped, and for a moment he thought wildly that the chakra and the rage and the hatred would burn him alive.

Then the roar subsided, and Naruto stared down at his hands in awe, and the molten chakra bubbling through them, and raised his eyes to the fox again.

It stared back smugly, one foreleg crossed over the other. It flicked its tails, and Naruto's feet left the water. He felt himself rising above the water, hurtling up through the fog of the chakra suppression seal until the fox and its curious cage faded from view. The seal loomed above him then, white fire and burning lines, but Naruto's ascent didn't stop. He squeezed his eyes shut instinctively and curled in on himself as he slammed into it and felt the seal shatter around him.

On the other side he heard Utautori's alarmed shout, then Mayoke's demanding tones, but the sound washed over him as he sat up, the ropes around his neck and wrists burning away into ash.

His fingers straightened with a crackle, bones snapping back into place one after another, and the sharp starbursts of pain only fueled his focus.

He felt the power thrumming through his veins, sensed the fear and confusion of the Kiri nin and Bara, the alarmed flicker of chakra signatures further away in the ship. He heard the sound of steel being drawn and smiled, because he felt no fear. Only anger. And a promise.

Naruto opened his eyes.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13: Shisui Is Not A Mother Hen, Shut Up Zabuza

He is, however, a closeted adrenaline junkie. (It's my dude Shisui!)

* * *

MISSION REPORT D-150

Risk survey conducted by Operative Cat-15 in regards to: continued presence with all targets and allies. Primary factors considered: acquisition of resources; defense, including education of targets and allies; frequency of detection or assault by enemy combatants.

Conclusion: presence of Operative Cat-15 detrimental to continued concealment and security of targets.

Plan of action: maintain minimal contact with self-sustaining targets. Operative Cat-15 will remove self from location with non-self-sustaining target AT2 and provide distractions and false trails.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

* * *

"Sensei!" Shisui turned, and Gaara collided with his midsection.

"Oof!" Shisui protested, exaggerated, and tangled his hand in his genin's rust-red spikes. "Gaara-kun, someday I'll mistake you for an enemy shinobi and throw you clear over the Hokage Monument."

Gaara giggled, ducking his face in Shisui's shirt to hide his shy smile. "You would not!" he protested, letting go and darting out from under Shisui's hand. "You like me too much."

Shisui swiped after him halfheartedly. "I guess you're right," he said, a fond smile tugging at the edge of his own mouth. "Where're your teammates?"

"Near the Forest of Death," Gaara said innocently, and Shisui's heart stopped just for a moment. "Sai wanted to draw a giant tiger, so Hinata is describing one to him."

Shisui slumped, clapping a hand over his eyes. "Why?" he bemoaned, as Gaara stifled another too-gleeful giggle. He leaned over and poked Gaara right in the middle of the hitai-ate wrapped around his forehead. "Are why aren't you with them, you little demon?"

Gaara stared up at him solemnly, a glint of wicked mischief in his eyes. "Because I am your favorite, Sensei."

"Nuh-uh, that's not working on me," Shisui warned, jabbing a finger at him as he strode off unhurriedly in the direction of Training Ground 44. "I've told you and your teammates at least a hundred times that I don't have favorites."

"That cannot be true," Gaara pointed out, trailing after him. "Every sensei has a favorite, even if they will not admit it."

"You are a terror," Shisui complained. Trees gave way to the metal fence towering over even their topmost branches, and beyond that, a bona fide jungle so thick he couldn't see ten meters into the gloom. He rolled his eyes at the 'Keep out! Danger!' signs plastered over the chain-link and raised his voice. "Hinata-chan! Sai-kun! You have ten seconds to get front and center before I pull us that brick-making D-rank you both hate!"

He knew without turning to check that Gaara was making a face behind him. "Don't give me that, Gaara-kun, you're a team - " He rounded the corner and the words died in his mouth.

Orochimaru turned to smile at him benignly, those reptilian golden eyes bright against his pale skin. Their too-familiar glint sent a frisson of fear shooting down his spine. "Oh, Shisui-kun," he purred, the words slithering like oil down Shisui's ears as he stood frozen. "I must thank you for the gifts. Her eyes are the most exquisite things, and his talent is quite intriguing as well."

 _No, stop, give them back,_ Shisui tried to say, but panic and terror swallowed the words and rendered him mute. His gaze trailed to the ground at the Sannin's feet and landed on Hinata, crumpled like a ragdoll. Her eyes stared, wide and unseeing, her mouth opened in surprise.

"Come home, Shisui-kun," Orochimaru murmured, stepping carelessly over Hinata's body, and Shisui's eyes snapped back up at once. The older man smirked and ran an abnormally long tongue over his teeth. "My experiments require more of your blood, and you were such a good boy for me." He took another menacing step forward. "I will take excellent care of you," he promised.

Shisui broke and ran.

The trees of the Forbidden Forest reached hungry hands for him, snarling his feet in their roots, and he bolted desperately through the darkness as panic thrummed through his veins. "Oh, Shisui-kun," Orochimaru sighed, his voice drifting all around Shisui as he frantically shoved his way through a thicket that trailed thorny tendrils in his hair and clothes. "You will never outrun me."

Shisui's breath came in harsh pants, and he fumbled for the hilt of his tanto only to grasp air, for his handonly to brush his empty holster. He reached for his chakra but it would not answer his call.

"Oh, child," Orochimaru chided, amusement in his voice. "Did you really think I would allow you chakra?" His towering figure loomed suddenly out of the darkness, and Shisui could not stop his forward momentum in time. The Sannin caught him by the shoulder as easily as one might a wayward dog and pinned him against a tree, and the rough bark dug into his back as Shisui struggled. "Now, I believe this belongs to me," Orochimaru mused, and reached towards his face.

Shisui suppressed a scream as long fingers dug into his eye socket and ripped out his eye in one brutal movement. He shut his other eye even as he kicked and twisted in Orochimaru's grasp.

"This is just the beginning, child," Orochimaru, purred, voice heavy with promise. "You belong to me, now. You will always be mine."

Shisui woke with a scream building in the the back of his throat, his muscles so tense he could feel his bones creak. For a moment, all he could do was breathe, deep, steadying breaths as his heart fluttered in his ribcage like a trapped bird. His eye strained against the darkness to make out the rough-hewn logs that made up the ceiling of his sleeping quarters, with the little cracks where the tarp thrown on top peeked through. He was alone today, with Itachi and Zabuza out on their own missions while Shisui lay here helpless against his own mind.

The nightmare having thoroughly chased away any further desire for sleep, Shisui hauled himself upright and hunched over on himself, scrubbing a hand over his face. With the other he reached for his tanto, and he breathed a little easier when he grasped the familiar worn leather of its hilt against his palm and its reassuring weight. In the middle of the godsdamned ocean. Several hundred thousand kilometers from that snake creep.

He strapped the tanto back on mechanically and reached for his kunai holster next. Sandals followed, then the bandana over his missing eye. Preparations complete, he scooted down off the rack and onto the floor. A step brought him to the platform's edge, another to the mud beneath.

A crescent of the moon hung a little ways above the horizon, and Shisui grimaced. Just two hours of sleep, then. No matter. Shisui had functioned on less.

Shisui made out Gaara's form far out on the water, sitting crosslegged with his palms pressed against the surface as he practiced drawing up sand from scores of kilometers deep. He didn't approach, instead turning aside to a stretch of ocean to the east. He knew it was irrational to mourn one who had never existed, yet he couldn't help but grieve for the bright, affectionate child in his dream, untainted by hatred or tragedy, and a future that could never be.

He closed his eye and let the steady up-and-down motion of the waves beneath his feet soothe his racing heart. He breathed in deeply and reached for his tanto, letting the familiar movement center him in his mind.

Itachi favored slow katas when he needed to unwind, a habit mirrored by both Hinata and Neji, but Shisui was a creature of speed. As soon as his blade cleared its sheath, he darted forward, lunging low across the water's surface. His tanto danced in a blur of light, arching above the ocean spray as he pivoted sharply, tucking his other arm back for balance. He launched into a leap, corkscrewing to evade phantom kunai, and the moment his feet touched the water he threw himself sideways again, landing with sure feet and a sharp thrust of his tanto.

He drew it back towards himself as he whirled again, flipping its hilt in his hand. He coiled back, a brief moment of stillness before lunging again. The wind tugged sharply through his hair, picking up the edges of his shirt as he moved through the rest of the kata, faster and faster as he neared the end, revelling in the rush of adrenaline sending jolts of ice through his veins.

He came to a stop abruptly, chest heaving from exertion and his hair windblown. He stared out across the ocean, the moonlight glinting off the gently bobbing waves, and felt the last of the tension built up by the dream melt away as it faded from his mind.

He realized then, standing still with his blade still outstretched in his ending pose, that he had not made a mistake in his katas for many months.

With a sigh he lifted his tanto to resheathe it and paused when he caught sight of his reflection in his blade. He paused, and after a quick glance behind him to make sure Zabuza wasn't sneaking up behind him to laugh at him for 'admiring' himself 'like a fucking princess' he angled the blade for a better look and grimaced. His roots were growing in - not noticeably, but definitely darker than the lighter brown he'd bleached it after leaving Kitakyushu with the kids.

"Well," he told the open air, "it's not like I have anything else to do."

He slid his tanto back into its sheath properly this time and turned back towards the island. The emptiness still unsettled him - only Team Genbu of all the pack were here, with Team Suzaku following Zabuza on his mission and Team Byakko on their first solo mission. Shisui wasn't worried about either of them.

That was a lie.

He knew Zabuza would watch out for Team Suzaku, even though his missions were much higher risk. He did, however, do his best to ignore the fact that Team Byakko was a bit of a mess at their best because he knew they'd watch out for each other. They also knew when to run when they were in too deep, and generally nobody bothered chasing down supply teams because they couldn't tell you anything more than a good sensor-nin could.

Nobody bothered chasing down supply teams unless the war turned into one of scarcity, but for his sanity, Shisui was trying very, very hard not to think of that possibility. Besides, Team Suzaku had run at least three by themselves, and Team Genbu one without any incidents. These missions were definitely less dangerous than the ones Shisui himself had run as a new genin, and then chuunin in the Third Shinobi World War.

"Just stop," Shisui muttered aloud to himself, and out of the corner of his eye Gaara's head swivelled like an owl, a good fifty meters away, to regard him curiously. Shisui waved at him, and Gaara's black-dyed hair turned back, disinterested. Shisui fought down a wave of fondness before turning back to the camp. The horizon lightened as the early morning sky lay siege on the blanket of night.

Back in his makeshift quarters, he sorted through the packages of powdered bleach. Maybe he could try a different color this time? It wasn't like he saw anyone outside the pack or the strike team, who Shisui hadn't even seen all in one place since Tetsu, given that Hatake had stayed with the rest of Hana-ha command at headquarters since the first skirmishes began in earnest.

He ripped open a packet carelessly with his teeth and dumped it into the bowl he kept specifically for this purpose, which still smelled faintly of bleach from its last use. For lack of a better tool, he pulled a blunted kunai from his spare packs - which he also kept for this purpose and vaguely recognized that this was probably not the best idea - to mix water into the solution.

Wartime equipment did not typically include mirrors, and Shisui felt a little weird about pulling out his tanto just to look at his own face in the blade, so he just used the blunt kunai to smather the bleach solution in his hair haphazardly. He had enough to completely drown his hair in it; he wasn't worried about running out halfway.

Gaara's chakra spiked in alarm. Attack? Shisui jerked, dropping the kunai and the bleach and hurtling off the raised platform without a second's hesitation. There were only four of them to defend this base. But Shisui didn't sense any enemy chakra signatures - only Gaara's and Naruto's. The sinking feeling in his chest intensified when he tried and failed to find Sakura or Sasuke. Once clear of the walls, he threw himself into a shunshin.

"Sensei," said Gaara, staring up at him with startled eyes.

Shisui's chakra coiled and bubbled beneath his skin. "What happened?" he demanded, even as he took in the scene: Gaara on his feet with a fistful of sand hovering just above his raised hand, and Naruto, swaying faintly on top of the water.

"The base got attacked and the boss and his team got captured," said Naruto, and burst into smoke.

Shisui sank into a battle-calm, one where panic and fear could not touch him. He turned to Gaara. "Make sure he wasn't followed," he ordered. Gaara nodded, narrow-eyed concentration replacing the almost vulnerable expression on his face as he took off across the water. Sand rose from the waves in his wake, but Shisui did not stay to watch.

A pivot and a second shunshin brought him to the pack's sleeping quarters just as Sai stepped out, sheathed tanto in one hand and normally sleek hair standing up in awkward spikes on one side of his head. "Sensei?" the boy asked cautiously.

"I need you to send a message to the captain," Shisui ordered without preamble. "Team Byakko captured. Requesting permission to retrieve and immediate relief team for Forward Base 25-35W."

Sai's eyes widened, but without hesitation, said, "Hai," and bolted for the command deck.

His departure left Hinata behind, clutching the side of a support strut with shaking hands. "W-what -" she began, but Shisui didn't have time for a stuttering Hyuuga heiress, not now.

"Kyuu," he said sharply, and almost regretted the way she snapped to attention, straightening out of her hunch with only a fine tremor in her hands to betray the frightened girl she had been. "Shichi is running a perimeter sweep. Notify me immediately if he finds anything."

"Hai," Hinata responded crisply, setting her hands in the seal and summoning her chakra.

Shisui turned and stepped into a shunshin again, this time straight into the command deck. Sai barely reacted to his arrival, which sent up a whirlwind of loose notes and mission reports that were all pretty important but which Shisui couldn't bring himself to care about.

Sai's head was bent over his scroll, and even without his Sharingan activated Shisui could feel the chakra in each character curling up and radiating softly from the paper as Sai formed each with precise brushstrokes. "What is the captain's location?" he asked without diverting his focus.

"23-37N," Shisui responded tersely.

Sai set his brush down, and his hands blurred through a series of seals. "Choujou Giga," he muttered, eyebrows pinched together in a frown of concentration. The words flowed off the page, coalescing into a lean, swallow-like bird with sharply angled wings and feathers of an unnatural white. It hopped once to the edge of the table and launched into flight, swooping out the doorway into the morning.

"Two more," said Shisui, and when Sai glanced up at him questioningly even as his hands smoothed out a new length of scroll, added, "One each to Zabuza and Itachi: Team Byakko captured. Imminent departure from Forward Base 25-35W for retrieval."

The words flowed under Sai's deft hands, and with a flash of chakra two songbirds flitted from the page and into open air. Sai watched them go for just one moment before tucking his ink and brush away. "You are confident we will be allowed to pursue," he observed.

Shisui turned away. "Yes," he lied. He flipped through the familiar handseals, stretching out his chakra in a far-flung call and nipping open the skin of his thumb to offer his blood. He crouched, slamming his palm down firmly and allowing his chakra to billow out beneath it. With a flurry of ebony feathers, Shisui's flock exploded out from the breach between worlds, and in that moment, their thoughts were his and his were theirs.

"Find them," he said aloud, and with a chorus of caws his crows dissipated into the sky in little dark streaks. One detached from its brethren and spiralled back down to alight on Shisui's shoulder. Mirin's claws dug sharp points through his shirt, and she tucked her beak in to grab the lobe of Shisui's ear and tug on it gently. He brought a hand up, scratching the soft spot just under her beak the way she liked it.

He turned to see Sai watching him, eyes wide. "I did not know you had summons," he noted.

Mirin croaked, amused. "I don't bring them out to play much," Shisui said wryly, rubbing her beak. "This is Mirin, the leader of my murder." Mirin chirruped, eyeing Sai with one intelligent eye. Mirin was neither the oldest nor the largest crow in his flock, but she was the canniest, with clear glossy feathers the same coal-black as most of his crows. She also had a very long memory. It took her fourteen months and many, many, metal bottlecaps before she forgave him for dying.

"Your murder," Sai repeated blankly.

Mirin croaked a laugh, and Shisui might have laughed too if three of his young pack hadn't gotten captured by the bloodthirstiest regime in the Elemental Lands. "My flock."

Gaara and Hinata met them as they exited the command deck. Gaara regarded Mirin curiously, Hinata warily.

"Clear," Gaara reported abruptly.

"No pursuers," Hinata added.

"Good," said Shisui. "Pack up the camp."

Hinata and Sai exchanged glances. "What will we be doing?" Hinata asked hesitantly, her persona dipping in the face of her uncertainty.

Shisui grimaced. "Waiting."

War involved a lot of waiting.

In his last war, Shisui's team waited until there was a supply shipment or written orders to run. Waited for the enemy teams to drift away from their camp, hardly daring to breathe lest they be caught. Waited for orders to advance or retreat. Waited until the enemy camp had been lulled to sleep by the stillness of the forest to strike.

Now, ten years later, Shisui's entire role in this war so far involved waiting. Waiting at Kitakyushu with the pack. Waiting at Forward Base 25-35W, the godsforsaken patch of mud in the middle of the ocean. Waiting for the captain to give them the all-clear to track whoever had taken Team Byakko. Or, more likely, waiting for the captain to deny his request so they could go rogue and track their missing team anyways.

In the meantime, Shisui sealed the last of their perishables in a storage scroll, which he added to his pack along with the scroll containing the contents of the command deck. Mirin, when Shisui flapped an irritable hand at her, deigned to perch on the edge of the roof of the now-barren command deck and oversee the emptying of the structures.

"S-sensei?" Hinata spoke up timidly.

Shisui turned.

Hinata wrung her hands together unconsciously but held her ground, blinking up at him from beneath shaggy bangs. "I-I think your h-hair is...m-melting."

Ah, shit. His hair.

He clapped a hand to his head and for his trouble got a palmful of bleach that had definitely been in his hair five times longer than it really should have. Sure enough, as he pawed through it gingerly, he found patches of his hair that had literally melted from the caustic bleach.

"Hm," he said neutrally. "Go help the others pack their things, Hinata-chan."

Hinata squeaked an affirmative, whirling on her heel and fleeing as quickly as she could while still walking.

Perched behind him, Mirin cackled. Shisui didn't bother feeling betrayed that she hadn't warned him earlier. Crows, after all, loved a good prank.

At the end of the day, hundreds of kilometers and five years from home, Shisui was still an Uchiha, and the fatal flaw of the Uchiha - along with love and wrath - was pride. And damned if Shisui's pride would let him walk around with most of his hair falling out.

He left the camp and the unfinished packing behind for the open water and submerged gently, teasing out the bleach with one hand. With the other, he drew healing chakra to his fingers. Shizune would probably pitch a fit if she knew what he was using her teachings for, but Shisui found there were quite a few things he could not bring himself to care about today.

He ran tendrils of chakra through his hair, reattaching where pieces had frayed, nudging contents back into their proper places and sealing them back up. He knit the strands back together handful by handful, and when his shoulder ached from keeping his arm up he could run a hand through his hair without taking out an entire chunk.

That would have to do. Shisui leaned over to examine his reflection in the waves lit by the rising dawn and grimaced. Most of his hair was now grey-white, as pale as Hatake's, but with patches of black where he hadn't spread the bleach evenly. He looked ridiculous, but at least he wasn't half bald. There were more important issues than fixing his hair, now that it'd stay attached.

He went back to camp and determinedly ignored Gaara's flat stare.

Shisui's crows were not built for long flights, and especially not ones over the ocean, where the wind constantly buffeted and shoved them from their courses. Mirin, who peering through her flockmates' eyes, croaked a negative after a negative as his summons ran out of energy one by one - the oldest and youngest first of all.

Shisui didn't pace or fidget; what was the point? He preened through Mirin's feathers with his fingers absently and considered plans of action.

What he knew: Team Byakko had departed this base just after one in the afternoon the day before for the Hana-ha base on Gull Hill, a roughly five hundred kilometers southeast and six hour trip for a genin travelling at a comfortable pace. Sixteen hours later, a kage bunshin made from Naruto's chakra returned to report the team's capture before immediately dispelling, a sign of high energy output consistent with an ambitious pace.

25-35W was the base closest to the base at Gull Hill; any team stationed here was ideally situated to perform reconnaissance, particularly if no other message had been sent out. If Gull Hill had fallen, the base to the east and closer to Kiri was either surrounded or about to be.

Team Genbu was designed for recon. Shisui's specialty was speed. They were ready to move. He just needed the word.

In times of danger and of stress, the pack huddled together as Team Genbu did now, back to back to back but not quite touching at the corner of the deck that had held nine just two days prior. Twenty-six hours after the arrival of Naruto's clone, Shisui perched on the table that had once held maps, markers, and reports, and waited.

He had just one map, now, a close-up of the small square of ocean to the west of Kiri that contained both 25-35W and Gull Hill. Neither were marked; Shisui had memorized both the bases' positions and those of the last known locations of all troops, but he examined it intently nonetheless.

Captured, not killed. But why? This base held very little strategic significance, even less than Gull Hill. It was a waystation for suppliers and teams withdrawing from the front. Not information, because genin teams knew very little, even if their sensei were prominent figures. Capturing genin teams drained resources and manpower better spent on a higher-risk, higher-yield target.

Where would they go? Staying at Gull Hill invited a counterattack, because when the base commander failed to report in, someone would be sent to check. Standard conventions of war dictated that containment of a prisoner required a force three times the strength - for a genin team, at least two chuunin teams. Many small islands dotted the ocean, but very few would have the raw resources or structures to support ten shinobi.

There was a sinking feeling weighing in the pit of his stomach.

Gaara's head swivelled, and Hinata's chakra flared minutely as she activated her Byakugan beneath her tinted glasses. Jarred out of his musings, Shisui tipped the porcelain mask down over his face and shoved the map into his back pouch. Far out on the water, chakra pulsed politely. "Shichi and Kyuu, check them out," he ordered. "Hachi, prepare for extraction and a fast exit."

Hinata nodded sharply, her cloak swirling around her as she leapt off the platform, Gaara darting after her. Sai rolled open his scroll, his brush sweeping busily over its surface.

Shisui let his Sharingan swirl to life, watching the blurs of chakra that were Hinata and Gaara as they stopped in front of four larger, taller chakra sources. Beside him, Sai crouched with his hands bracketing the great hawk sketched in bold, black lines, chakra thrumming just beneath his skin. Shisui turned slowly to scrutinize the ocean around them but saw no chakra-glow, only the sunlight glinting off the waves.

"Sensei," prompted Sai, and Shisui turned, Sharingan blinking out as Hinata stepped towards them carefully. The four shinobi at her back towered over her almost comically, dwarfing her in both height and width.

Shisui glanced at Hinata, who nodded slightly. "Welcome to Forward Base 25-35W," he said grimly, given the team a once-over.

"Captain," the first greeted. He favored his left side just slightly and wore a bandana over shaggy orange-brown hair. "Hana-Shi-164, tokubetsu jounin. This is my team. We're your relief."

Shisui suppressed a frown. "Which captain gave you those orders?"

The tokujo hesitated. "It came from Commander Hatake, sir," he said, and produced a scroll from one of the pouches on his flak jacket.

Hatake.

Shisui flicked open the scroll and gave the contents a once-over. Hana-An-010: affirmative. Relief team sent under Hana-Shi-164, tokubetsu jounin. Recon only authorized; do not engage. Rendezvous at 20 klicks southwest of Gull Hill. End.

Rendezvous? Not the captain himself, surely. Itachi, probably.

Shisui rolled the scroll back up and jerked his chin over his shoulder at the empty wooden structures. "It's all yours," he said. "My team's clearing out."

"This is your team?" 164 asked curiously, twisting around to glance back at Gaara, still far out on the water. Anbu and captains did not have teams unless those shinobi were fully-fledged Anbu themselves, or at least chuunin. To the trained eye, Sai, Hinata, and Gaara were neither. Shisui should have refused the damned promotion.

"Yes," Shisui answered absently, and nodded to Sai. The chakra in Sai's hands flowed down, into his ink, and the hawk stirred, growing ever larger as it flapped its way free of the paper.

One of the shinobi behind 164 jumped backwards. "Holy shit," he muttered.

"Ready, Sensei," said Sai, perched where the creature's neck met its body. Hinata flitted up, and Shisui followed.

"Go get 'em, captain," said 164, taking a healthy step backwards. The draft from the creature's wings whipped the team's hair and clothes as it rose, and Shisui anchored himself to the creature's back as it swooped low over the ocean. Gaara leapt straight up, and the hawk tilted so he landed lightly on its back behind Hinata.

"Get us some height," Shisui said, and the creature spiraled upwards dutifully.

"Where will we be going?" Sai asked.

"Gull Hill," Shisui answered grimly.

Gull Hill was abandoned.

Dry patches of dark brown blood splattered the charred trees. Shisui stepped noiselessly over churned ground and scorched tatters of canvas, eyeing the burned-out remnants of the camp with his sharingan whirling softly. Sunset set the trees ablaze as he picked his way through what had been the quartermaster's tent, but he saw no chakra-glow where the flames had torn through the camp. No living beings. Only smoke, twirling up into the sky where embers still smoldered.

He tilted his head up to where Team Genbu circled, a tiny black speck in the sky, before continuing onwards through the debris.

At the base of a tree, Shisui found another body. He reached down and gently rolled the shinobi over onto his back. The skin was cool to the touch, the muscles rigid. His eyes were open, and his throat slashed open in one jagged blow. The blood had dripped down his throat and onto his flak jacket.

Shisui could not bury him. He slid the staring eyes closed carefully and stood.

Nine.

In the trees he found more detritus of a hard-fought battle. Kunai lodged in tree trunks, water pooled where the ocean could not reach, and the earth itself had been gouged as if by a great claw.

He found the tenth, facedown in the bushes with a bloody rip in his shirt where he'd been stabbed. This one wore no flak jacket or armor, only a light jacket, and when Shisui rolled him over, he found a face too round and soft to grow a beard. Just a kid, no older than Itachi. He held a sword in his hand still, locked there by death's grip, and his empty pupils had blown impossibly wide. Shisui closed his eyes too and moved on.

Twenty-three bodies total, all Hana-ha. More, probably, lay beneath the waves, weighed down by metal in their bodies or carried away by the tides to wash up on other bases with their faces bloated beyond recognition.

Gull Hill had been a sizeable base, with a fighting force well over a hundred. Kiri had not captured the base, only razed it, and taken their fallen with them. Yet even on the journey over, Shisui had not seen a single one of their shinobi - Kiri did not intend on returning anytime soon.

At the northeast corner of the island, with their relatively untouched trees, Shisui finally stopped. The moon illuminated the forest and the sand when he stepped out onto the beach. He signed the all-clear, and knowing it would be seen, turned back into the cover of the trees.

A whoosh of wind preceded his team, and Hinata's familiar chakra bobbed as she trotted to catch up. "Sensei," she said, and Shisui was almost too heartsick to deal with her cold Kyuu.

"Hinata-chan," he said instead, and smiled reassuringly at her when she stopped, surprised. "Don't keep watch tonight, okay? Any of you. I will stand guard."

"H-hai," she replied, eyes a little wide.

Shisui's heart clenched at the uncertainty in the pinch around her eyes, the wariness in the tensing of her shoulders. She was too small, too delicate for a hell like this, where the corpses of her people lay scattered like seeds, hidden only as long as she closed her eyes to them. "Your teammates," Shisui said, in an impulse driven by melancholy. "Hold on to them. You have their backs, no matter what."

"H-hai," Hinata repeated, a little bewildered.

Shisui stopped under the cover of trees, in a small clearing untouched by the war that had ripped apart the rest of the island. Moss carpeted the ground and crawled halfway up the trees. Gaara padded past him, eyes going around the clearing curiously.

"Sensei?" Sai asked, and held up a flint when Shisui turned.

Shisui shook his head. "No fire," he said. "Just get some rest, Sai-kun."

Ordering Gaara not to keep watch proved difficult given that the jinchuuriki could not sleep without, by all accounts, unleashing a demon to rampage through the island. Even as Hinata and Sai wrapped themselves in their cloaks and drifted off into an uneasy sleep on the mossy ground with their shoulders touching, Gaara hunched just out of reach, his eyes glinting vacantly in the darkness even as his fingers clenched and flexed over and over.

Perched in a tree with sightlines to the beach, his back to the trunk, Shisui watched him from the corner of his eye. "Gaara-kun," he said softly, barely audible, and Gaara glanced up at him immediately. Shisui beckoned, and Gaara's head cocked curiously, like a cat.

Shisui waited, and Gaara rose slowly, padding across the clearing until he stood directly under Shisui's branch. In an easy bound, he leapt up, landing so lightly the branch did not bounce under his weight. For a moment, he stopped there. Shisui kept waiting, and bit by bit, Gaara inched forward until he sat practically on top of Shisui's sprawled out legs, his face not twenty centimeters away from Shisui's. His pale eyes examined Shisui's one eye unwaveringly.

"C'mere," said Shisui, and reached up carefully to take hold of Gaara's shoulder. Gaara let him pull him down next to him, gaze still locked on him curiously. He slid his arm around the boy, pulling him close to his side.

Gaara's thin shoulders first tensed, then gradually relaxed, leaning his head against Shisui's chest. Shisui felt his breathing deepen into something that might have been sleeping for any of the other pack, but when he glanced down Gaara's eyes were still open. He peered up at Shisui again, and Shisui rubbed his shoulder comfortingly.

"Sensei," said Gaara. Shisui hummed a response. "Naruto's team. What happened?"

Shisui sighed through his nose. "I don't know," he admitted in a low murmur. "My crows haven't found anything, and they're not on this island. If they ended up at another base, the captain would have had that report forwarded to me."

Gaara's eyes narrowed. "You know something," he said, not quite an accusation.

Shisui grimaced slightly, just a twitch of his mouth. "I suspect something," he corrected.

Gaara watched him quietly, and when it became clear Shisui wasn't going to continue, prompted, "What?" in a rumble just shy of an irritated growl.

Shisui tangled his fingers in Gaara's hair, rubbing reassuringly against his scalp. "I've never seen one myself, but Kiri has seven warships - mobile bases that can maneuver large forces from place to place quickly and without much chakra. If they were captured, Team Byakko might be aboard one."

"Hard to find," Gaara noted, his eyebrows knitting together.

"Yeah," Shisui agreed. "But we'll find them."

Gaara frowned dubiously. "How many?"

"On a warship?" Shisui drummed his fingers thoughtfully. "I would say anywhere between thirty and two hundred."

Gaara's fingers clenched against Shisui's shirt. "We cannot defeat thirty to two hundred enemy shinobi."

"Gaara-kun," Shisui said, and Gaara leaned up to face him. "We will get them back."

Gaara regarded him intently. "Promise?"

Shisui knew better than to make promises he could not keep. "Promise," he said anyways.

Shisui did not count the number of hours he had been awake, but sleep evaded him nonetheless. By the time the sun rose, his left arm had fallen asleep from the weight of Gaara's head and he therefore could not move it, but he fidgeted with a kunai in his right, flipping it over and over his fingers.

At sunhigh, Hinata finally stirred, and Sai seconds after her. She stirred, and the childlike innocence faded from her face, replaced by wariness. She struggled to her feet, unfurling her cloak around her and leaning on Sai's shoulder to lever herself upright. Sai grunted but didn't protest, rolling carefully to his feet after her.

Hinata glanced up, some of the strain around her eyes easing at the sight of Shisui and Gaara perched in the tree like oversized crows. Gaara lifted his head a little to peer down at her. "S-sensei," she said, frowning slightly. "D-did you s-sleep?"

"Iie. Not yet," said Shisui warmly. "I'll sleep a little now, since you're all up. The three of you take turns on watch, wake me up if any of you sense anything, and don't leave the clearing." The sun had chased away the shadows of the night, and in the daytime the nightmares lurking just out of sight were much easier to ignore.

"Hai," said Sai, echoed by Hinata.

Shisui watched as Hinata slid into her beginning stretches, and Sai did the same. He looked down at Gaara. "Aren't you going to join them?"

Gaara hummed low in his throat. "No," he said, and settled back against Shisui.

Shisui closed his eye and did not sleep.

* * *

 _"Oh, child, you have no secrets from me."_

* * *

"Sensei."

Shisui slid his eye open, Sai's level voice jarring him from his not-sleep. His muscles had tensed without his notice, and slowly, he relaxed them. Gaara scrutinized him, still perched on the same branch. Shisui blinked at him, then glanced down at Sai.

"Zabuza-sensei's team is approaching from the north," he reported, tipping his head slightly at Hinata. Behind him, Hinata tilted her head towards Shisui, but even so he could tell her focus was far away.

Shisui felt his eyebrows rise. "The rendezvous is twenty kilometers away," he noted. "We may as well head there and see who else shows up. Just give me a moment to send the crows out."

Shisui had known that Itachi's mission was a quick one, and given that his brother had been taken prisoner of war, he wasn't surprised to find him already on the little spit of sand, standing perfectly still. A crow perched on his shoulder, and as they neared, Shisui recognized Nobu.

"Shisui," he greeted neutrally, his eyes flickering first over Team Genbu, then Mirin before meeting Shisui's eye. His eyes were blank, distant, and far too intent to be considered calm.

"Zabuza's team is en route," Shisui said instead of commenting. "Found anything?"

Itachi didn't quite frown, but his eyes narrowed slightly. "No," he said. "Roughly twenty survivors of the attack arrived at the Lavaridge base yesterday, but Sasuke's team was not among them. My crows are sweeping the south."

"Mine, the north." Shisui sighed. "No sign so far."

"The warship Jurojinmaru," Zabuza growled, striding in from the water as his team trailed behind him. "All the others are accounted for."

Shisui examined them critically. Temari glanced back him strangely with her wild hair straggling free of their ties, two spots of color sat high on Haku's cheeks, and Neji swayed slightly on his feet. He frowned, but before he could say anything, Zabuza barked an abrupt laugh.

"Holy shit, Konoha, what happened to your hair?" he demanded gleefully.

Shisui flicked his mask up with a sigh, covering his hair as best he could. "I got distracted while bleaching it," he muttered, the annoyance in his voice only halfhearted. "This is all I could salvage, and I didn't have time to re-dye it."

"You look like an idiot," Zabuza informed him helpfully.

Shisui did not respond, because he was setting a good example for the shinobi children and above such petty taunts.

"Hey. Hey, Spots. Tenzai," Zabuza said, smirking.

"No," said Shisui flatly, narrowing his eye at him.

"Such a nickname is accurate, Sensei," said Sai thoughtfully, examining the back of Shisui's head. Hinata nodded agreement timidly before freezing in mortification.

"The Jurojinmaru," Itachi prompted, on the edge of forceful and impatient as Shisui contained the urge to glare at his team.

"Intel put three ships at the Kirigakure home port, three at major bases, and one wandering the ocean, launching surprise attacks on minor bases," Zabuza elaborated, after a nominal glare which was a personality flaw Shisui was sure nobody cared enough about to confront him over. "What's the plan?"

"Find the ship," Shisui answered. "Get our people out. Sink the ship."

Zabuza whistled. "Sink a warship with three Anbu and six genin? You're crazy, Konoha." He grinned, rolling his shoulders back languidly. "I'm in."

"You don't have a choice," Shisui said dryly. "Your ego would never let you pass up a chance like that."

Zabuza shrugged cheerfully. "You know me too well."

"What do you know about the crew and capabilities of the Jurojinmaru?" Itachi cut in.

"She's a fast one," Zabuza noted. "I don't know the exact layout, but she's got a relatively small crew - usually about fifty low caste to get her moving and thirty mid to upper caste fighting force. Last I heard, she's captained by Fukushima Kentashi, an ex-Anbu jounin known for his ability to summon or intensify a rainstorm."

Shisui frowned thoughtfully. "How did a ship carrying eighty wipe out a base with over a hundred shinobi?"

"Surprise, superior shinobi, and control of the environment," Zabuza reeled off. "How many Shirei-bu teams are squatting on one base? No more than four or five per hundred shinobi. Nearly forty percent of the crew on warships are members of Kiri's command corps."

Shisui hummed consideringly. "Anbu?"

"Nah. Not usually."

Shisui squinted. "We can take thirty Shirei-bu shinobi. Smaller numbers have the advantage in smaller spaces. As long as we keep them bottlenecked belowdeck, we can grab the team, no problem. I can - "

Zabuza and Itachi exchanged a remarkably unsubtle glance. Shisui narrowed his eye. "What was that look?" he demanded mildly.

Zabuza didn't break eye contact with Itachi. "Anyone under 160 - shit, sorry, Uchiha - anyone under 150 centimeters, take a hike," he ordered.

"I am 162.5 centimeters tall," said Itachi with great dignity as the assorted shinobi children shuffled obediently if reluctantly to the far end of the sand spit. If Naruto were here, he would probably protest and Sakura would scold him while Sasuke rolled his eyes at them. Their absence, noted before, was conspicuous now.

"What?" Shisui repeated, resisting the urge to step between Zabuza and his cousin so they would stop doing the thing where they talked with their eyes.

Zabuza heaved a put-upon sigh. "Look, Konoha," he said gruffly. "When's the last time you participated in a fight any more hardcore than a back alley bar brawl?"

Shisui scowled. "A month ago," he answered.

"And before that?" Zabuza prodded, unimpressed, because he was a bit of an asshole.

"Five years ago," Shisui retorted challengingly. And then he waited expectantly, because by the gods he was going to make them spell it out.

Another glance exchanged. "Shisui," began Itachi slowly.

"All right," Zabuza interrupted with a shrug.

Itachi stopped to stare. With anyone else it might have been a glare, but Itachi was a little too excellent at burying his emotions.

Shisui resisted the knee-jerk urge to say, Really? and completely screw up his chances on this mission, because technically Itachi was the most senior captain here, and if he vetoed, Shisui would have to go against direct orders to participate, which could jeopardize the operation and probably Team Byakko.

"Yeah," said Zabuza, and gestured vaguely in Shisui's direction. "Look at him. He's fine. Fully functional or whatever."

Maybe Zabuza knew about his night terrors, the way his focus sometimes slipped out of the present day. Maybe he didn't. But Itachi definitely did.

"This is a high impact, high stress operation," Itachi said cautiously. I don't know if I can trust you in the field, he didn't say.

Shisui laid down his trump card. "You need me," he said. You can't afford not to have me. This was playing Itachi directly, in the dirtiest way possible. Would you gamble me for the possibility of Sasuke's return? They both knew the answer to that.

Itachi's mouth thinned. "Very well," he said shortly, his stare tipping into a glare.

"I'll be fine," Shisui said lightly, steeling himself against the thrill of adrenaline singing down his spine. "I've had nothing to do but train for two years."

"Training," Itachi said icily, "cannot mimic battlefield conditions to a great degree of accuracy."

Zabuza raised an eyebrow at Shisui. Shisui shook his head. He didn't have the energy to pick a fight with Itachi already on edge.

"All right," said Zabuza, tactful for once in his life. "Let's get this shitshow planned." He raised his voice. "Get back in here, midget squad. Ears open, mouth shut unless you have something not stupid to contribute."

Temari sidled up to Shisui's elbow with Gaara on her heels, her face perfectly blank as if she and all the other children had not been eavesdropping silently on the other side of the sand spit. Shisui eyed her and Gaara, amused, but neither so much as twiched.

"Locating the Jurojinmaru takes priority," said Itachi, once all six genin had clustered around them. "We will split into three teams to cover more ground."

"You, kid, and you, punk, with me. Dollface, hotshot, go with Konoha. Princess and midget, you're with Uchiha," Zabuza drawled, and Temari scowled ferociously at him. "One good pair of eyes per team. No offense, Konoha."

Shisui shrugged. "Can't take any. I don't have a pair. Which one of you is 'hotshot?'"

Hinata put her hand up timidly. Shisui eyed her dubiously, then turned on Zabuza, who shrugged unrepentantly.

"We will proceed north with an overlapping search pattern," said Itachi, ignoring them to pull a map from his back pouch. "My crows and Shisui's will cover the wings and liaise between teams as necessary."

"No going in on your own," Shisui chipped in.

"Don't even get spotted," Zabuza muttered. "You'd be so fucked."

Never let it be said that Zabuza was a great motivational speaker. Neither Sai nor Hinata had ever been the most talkative in the pack, but as Shisui led them away, Hinata's lips were pressed tightly together, and Sai's face showed absolutely no emotion.

Shisui regretted bringing them from the island, from Kitakyushu, from San's forest in Tetsu. He regretted their flight from Konoha, the Sandaime's assassination, the Fall. He regretted that he couldn't kill Danzo when he'd had the chance. He regretted failing himself, his clan, and his village in one fell swoop because of his weakness. But now, at this very moment, Shisui regretted the most that he could not reassure them.

"Hey," he said, and Sai and Hinata looked up at him, the former halfway through unfurling a length of his scroll. "Let's do this safely and quickly, okay? Make sure you take care of yourselves. The second you feel low on chakra, let me know. Understood?"

"Hai," said Sai obediently, bringing his hands together in a hand seal.

"Hai," Hinata echoed, her face set in Kyuu's grim determination.

Shisui nodded at Sai, whose eyes narrowed in concentration as he gathered his chakra. "Choujou Giga." His hawk peeled off the scroll, sweeping all three onto its back with an upstroke of its massive wings before launching into the sky in an abrupt lunge. Shisui's breath caught in his lungs as the ground jerked away dizzyingly.

Itachi hated - sorry, strongly disliked - flying, Shisui assumed because of its sheer lack of control, and Zabuza didn't care either way, but Shisui loved the sensation of hurtling through the air, the roar of the wind battering his face, the unrestrained freefall. The ocean yawned below them, wide and unending and relentlessly blue, sparkling where the sunlight caught the waves. The creature climbed in a lazy spiral with Sai's guiding hand on the base of its neck, and Shisui watched as first Itachi's team, then Zabuza's darted out onto the ocean's surface, tiny specks that soon vanished amidst the vastness of the ocean.

The novelty of flying quickly faded under the monotony of the search. The light glinting off the water far below quickly grew much more intrusive, boring into Shisui's eye as the sun rose higher and higher in the sky, so he instead kept his gaze on his map.

"Island," Hinata reported. "Seven degrees from relative north, twenty kilometers."

Shisui hummed acknowledgement. "Any inhabitants?"

Hinata's eyes narrowed as she focused. "No," she answered after a pause. "Sand and rocks, low shrubbery."

Shisui nodded absently and made a tiny mark on his map with a charcoal stick. Hinata let her Byakugan fade, dimming her chakra briefly.

The sun rose until it hung directly over their heads, but despite being that much closer to its heat, Shisui shivered from the icy blast of the air against his face. As Sai banked their hawk in a smooth turn, he said, "I estimate that this construct will last for another fifteen minutes."

"Ah," said Shisui. "Kyuu - "

"Nearest island is four point five kilometers twenty-seven degrees from relative north," she said smoothly, without further prompting. "Uninhabited."

"Thank you," said Shisui. "Go for it, Hachi."

The island jutted out of the ocean like a knife, nothing more than grey-black rock with a faint dusting of moss on its sheer face. Sai's hawk circled once, but the largest flat surface proved no larger than a square meter, tilted nearly thirty degrees towards the ocean. Sai glanced back at Shisui apologetically, but Shisui jerked his head at the ledge anyways.

Hinata leapt first, then Shisui, and Sai last of all. His hawk dispelled in a soft puff of chakra, and Shisui let out a silent sigh, leaning down to sit on the edge of the drop. "Twenty minute break," he told them both over his shoulder, sticking the end of his charcoal in his mouth absently as he examined the map, with its tiny rows of X's.

Behind him, cellophane crinkled. "Sensei," Sai prompted, and when Shisui turned, offered him a ration bar. "Thank you," he said, and tore it open with his teeth.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a dark speck approaching, and as he looked he recognized Mirin, flapping towards him laboriously. He held out his hand as she approached, and she landed heavily on his wrist, wings half-spread for balance. "You've worked hard," he said, both an apology and a thanks.

She eyed him balefully and croaked.

Shisui sighed regretfully. "Still nothing, huh? That's fine. Thank you. You can go."

Mirin cawed an annoyed curse at him but didn't dispel, instead hopping up onto his shoulder. Shisui craned around to find her examining his two students critically. He huffed, amused.

"Hello," said Sai, blinking at the crow. Hinata's eyes darted back and forth between Mirin and Shisui, ration bar half-eaten in her mouth.

"Ah," said Shisui. "Mirin likes to try out different perches."

Sai's eyes widened minutely a split second before Mirin pounced, her wings flailing gracelessly. Sai ducked, and the crow landed on his head with an unhappy rattle deep in her throat. She scrabbled for purchase before slipping off entirely and hop-skipping over to Hinata's shoulder. Hinata slid over just her eyeballs to stare at the bird, who stared back interestedly. It was oddly adorable.

Shisui's internal timer went off. He drummed his heels on the ledge. "All right, kids," he said. "Sai, do you have enough chakra for another bird?"

"Aa," Sai agreed, sliding his scroll out of his back pouch.

Ocean. Island. Ocean. Island. Blue waves burned orange as the sun set. Sai's last construct had given out a good six hours ago, so as the final rays blazed across the water, Shisui's team greeted it with their feet on those waves.

A dark shadow swooped from the sky, and as Shisui raised his hand, his team slowed to a stop. The crow that landed on his wrist was not Mirin, but Dashi, one of the younger ones in his flock. He proffered one clawed foot with a slip of rolled paper. "Thank you," he told the crow, scrubbing his finger along his neck before taking the the paper carefully. Dashi chirruped in his throat, and rubbed his entire face against Shisui's hand affectionately.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sai inched forward to examine the crow - still a chick, really. Shisui lifted his hand to his shoulder so Dashi could hop off and unrolled the paper. Hana-An-010. Rendezvous 25.79-35.85, adjourn search for the night. End.

Who else could it be but Itachi? Even on - or especially on - official communications, Zabuza would probably start the message with, Hey, dipshit .

"Wrapping it up for tonight, kids," said Shisui aloud. "Let's go." He handed the slip to Hinata, who stared at it as if there was some hidden message.

Shisui turned, but neither followed.

"We have not located the missing team yet," Sai said, only metaphorically digging in his heels because he couldn't actually do that standing atop water.

"And we won't, not tonight," Shisui said firmly. "Kyuu's been using her eyes all day, and you're low on chakra as well. If you burn yourself out, you won't be any use to Shi, Go, or Roku. Or you'll drown," he added as an afterthought. "Come on."

Sai frowned, and Shisui narrowed his eye. "Now," he ordered, shoving down the frustration of the long day's fruitless search. He just wanted to sleep, or burn something down. Preferably both.

Hinata jerked forward almost instinctively, something almost confused on her face as she did so, and after half a second's pause, Sai followed as well.

Dashi chirped reproachfully, but at Hinata's lurch rather than Shisui's tone. He didn't care much about human talk - just food and petting. That was fine. Shisui had enough reproach for himself for both of them.

At the rendezvous was a donut-shaped island, high walls of dark rock ringing an inlet. It was empty but for Itachi, Temari, and Gaara, and a small fire shielded from sight by the trees. The sky and the sea had since faded to black, and Shisui and Sai trailed Hinata as she picked her way through the trees confidently towards the light only she could see.

As the fire's glow became visible through the trees, Dashi croaked a greeting, returned by Kombu's distinctive caw.

Itachi glanced up as they approached, and Shisui's mouth watered at the enticing scent of roasted fish. "Hope that's for us," Shisui said wearily.

"I hope you are willing to share," Itachi said in return, his dark eyes watching as Hinata and Sai migrated towards Temari, leaned against a fallen log where Gaara perched. "Zabuza is yet to arrive."

Shisui accepted a skewer of fish, dropping down beside his cousin. "Any sign?" he asked in a low murmur.

"Iie." Itachi turned his own skewer over in his hands. "We did approach the Itsukikawa base. They received twenty-four Gull Hill survivors, but none that saw three young genin or know anything regarding the warship's current whereabouts."

Shisui closed his eye, just briefly. "We'll find them," he said with more confidence than he felt.

"It has been three days," Itachi said quietly, and when Shisui glanced over he saw both fear and grief shadowing his eyes.

"We will," Shisui insisted.

But the next day bore more of the same.

* * *

 _"Shisui-kun, I promise you that after this, you will never forget me."_

* * *

Shisui's eye were gritty and rough when he woke on the dawn of the fifth day. Itachi's back was warm against his as he paused to just breathe, even breaths to slow his rabbiting heart. He opened his eye to a sideways Zabuza, who saluted him sardonically before going back to sacrificing blood to Kubikiribocho like it was some sort of pagan god instead of a truly creepy chunk of metal.

He eased himself upright, slowly so he didn't wake Itachi, and glared blearily out at the morning. This island held no trees, only a treacherous series of caves, and so sunlight filtered in weakly from the cave entrance through the remnants of the previous night's campfire.

Against the opposite cave wall, the pack of shinobi children piled carelessly, wrapped in their furred cloaks against the chill. Gaara was nowhere to be seen, but given Zabuza's lack of concern, he was likely outside, exploring or hunting breakfast.

"Five days in Kiri captivity," said Zabuza nonchalantly as Shisui attempted to blink himself into wakefulness, but Shisui heard the warning the other shinobi wouldn't explicitly say.

"They're resilient," Shisui argued mildly.

"Kiri is cruelest to its children," Zabuza retorted, not making eye contact with Shisui. "Her hand is freest with the screws and the blade. You gotta be prepared for that."

"If they - Naruto - " Shisui stopped. "A chakra output like that would be felt as far as in Kirigakure itself."

"So not him, yet," Zabuza said ruthlessly. "But how long do you think that hag is going to let Hatake keep three Anbu on a search and rescue in the middle of the fucking ocean?"

"Z, Terumi Mei doesn't have a say in where Hana-ha shinobi go as long as the positions we agree to hold are being held," Shisui muttered.

"Officially," Itachi interjected, rolling over onto his back and easing upright, "this mission is classified as a search and destroy. I believe Command is curious to see if a warship can be sunk."

Shisui manfully resisted the urge to brush the disheveled hair out of his cousin's face.

"Cool," said Zabuza unconvincingly, clearly distracted. "You look like someone pushed a horse into a windmill during a twister, Uchiha."

"That makes zero sense," Shisui informed him mournfully as Itachi stared blankly at the far wall. A shadow darkened the light coming from the entrance, and Shisui looked up to see Gaara, a bucket made of sand floating in front of him. His dark-ringed eyes stared unwaveringly at Shisui. "Good morning, Gaara-kun," he greeted. "Is that for breakfast?"

Gaara blinked, then turned deliberately to look behind him. Shisui stiffened as a second, much taller figure ducked in after him. "Captain," he said, surprised. Gaara picked his way between them, dropping his sand and several fish with it to the ground next to the fire.

Zabuza eyed Hatake balefully as the captain stopped about halfway down the slope, leaning up against the wall. "Look who decided to show up," he muttered unenthusiastically.

"I came from the Shiroisuna base," Hatake said without preamble. "They had a sighting of a dark unidentified object on the horizon, too large and too fast to be anything other than a warship or comparable craft."

Itachi straightened. "Will you be joining the recovery team?" he asked, more neutral than hopeful. "You have little time to spare from the rest of the war effort."

Zabuza snorted, but Hatake said, "We'll find them today." He shot Itachi a half-amused, half-admonishing glance. "You weren't thinking of taking on a warship with just two jounin, were you?"

Hold up. Two? "Um," said Shisui pointedly, but was summarily ignored.

"Momochi, tell us what you know about the ship," Hatake ordered, sliding open a blank notebook. "We'll plan out the general assault now."

"This particular piece of shit's called the Jurojinmaru," Zabuza said gruffly. "Three levels, plus the top deck and the structures on it. Crew's around fifty low caste genin and chuunin and thirty upper caste, mostly chuunin but some jounin and genin. Captain is Fukushima Kentashi, jounin, ex-Anbu, water-nature, called Susano'o no Kiri."

Momentarily derailed, Shisui scoffed. "Susano'o," he repeated dubiously, exchanging a wry glance with Itachi.

Zabuza rolled his eyes. "Don't be such a snob, Konoha. He has that name because he's known for raising storms out of nowhere."

"What do we need to know to bring this ship down?" Hatake asked. "It can't be a normal ship, or it'd have been sunk a long time ago."

Zabuza jerked his head in a reluctant nod. "Seals," he growled, reaching out for the notebook. Hatake handed it over, and Zabuza scribbled in it for a moment. "Probably around ten to twenty. Can't tell for sure - it's different for every ship. They're strengthening seals, so the wood around them is impervious to even enhanced strength and jutsu, but they can be broken directly on or above the seal itself. We need one of the white-eyes to confirm their exact locations to destroy them."

"As well as to locate the missing team," Itachi said, tilting his head to watch Zabuza draw. "The extraction team should include Neji."

"And the kid. He's fast," Zabuza added. He flipped the notebook around to show the rough sketch of a ship. "Here she is. Seals along both walls and the deck. Two cabins on the fore and aft for command crew. Top deck has two main hatches leading belowdeck. Upper deck is upper caste shinobi quarters, kitchen, training rooms. Middle deck is lower caste quarters. There's hatches along the side for the jutsu to speed or steer the ship. Bottom is the hold, for storage. If they have any room for prisoners it'll be either there or the middle deck."

"This will be a three step operation," Hatake said, taking back the notebook from Zabuza. "Step one is observation - Neji and Hinata will mark seal locations and where any and all prisoners are held. Step two is extraction. Itachi, Neji, and Haku will enter a hatch in the middle deck and retrieve all prisoners, including Team Byakko. At the same time, Zabuza, Temari, and Gaara will mount an assault from the top deck with the goal of drawing attention and preventing as many as possible from joining the fight. Step three is destruction. All combat-assigned shinobi focus on locating and destroying the seals."

"Just taking out the seals won't sink the ship," Zabuza growled. "You still need some major fucking firepower for that."

Hatake huffed slightly, amusement in the crinkle of his eye. "The one called Susano'o - get him to make a storm. I'll take care of the rest." He drummed his fingers on the notebook. "Shisui, Sai, and Hinata will stay up high, out of sight. Take out any distress messages you see and notify the assault teams if backup is coming. Guard all retrieved prisoners."

"Hang on," interrupted Shisui indignantly. "I don't need to be up there with Sai-kun and Hinata-chan. They can handle that themselves. Put me on the extraction team, Taichou."

"No," Hatake dismissed. "You're not ready for that."

"You're letting the kids in this fight but not me?" Shisui demanded, feeling his blood boil as indignation turned to anger. "This kind of ambush is literally everything that I'm good at!"

"Was," Hatake corrected icily. "It's been five years since you were an active shinobi, Uchiha. You'll join the sentry team."

"No," said Shisui.

Hatake straightened slowly, turning to stare at Shisui. "That wasn't a suggestion," he said dangerously.

Itachi glanced between the two of them. "Shisui - " he began.

"Leaving me behind on this extraction is strategically unsound, sir," Shisui soldiered on, ignoring his cousin's attempts at peacemaking. "I'm the fastest. I'm your best shot at a clean extraction."

"We need you with Hinata and Sai," Hatake said, snapping the notebook shut. He didn't look at Shisui.

"I'm sure they're capable of taking care of themselves," Shisui snapped, feeling the heat rushing through his veins. "I'm a shinobi, not a fucking mascot. Don't coddle me, Hatake, just because I remind you of another one-eyed Uchiha. Sir," he tacked on belatedly, as if it could erase the last ten seconds.

Shisui regretted the words almost as soon as they left his mouth. Itachi's eyes widened almost imperceptibly. Unnoticed until that moment, Gaara paused halfway through skewering his fifth fish and very carefully did not look up.

Hatake's eye went cold and flat.

"Oh, shit," Zabuza muttered in the background, sounding half impressed and half horrified.

Faintly, Shisui mused that Hatake must have excellent control over his killing intent for Shisui not to be a smear in the dirt right about now. Nevertheless, he stood his ground, lifting his chin defiantly into the oppressive silence.

"Itachi, Momoichi, regroup in one hour to finalize the assault plan," Hatake said at last, his voice void of emotion. He slung his pack over his shoulder and stalked out, leaving the other three still sitting frozen in the cave.

"Shit," Shisui whispered, slapping a hand over his eye. The anger still smoldered beneath his skin, but now it was joined by shame and a sinking dread.

"Shit," Zabuza repeated, in an entirely different tone.

"That was unwise," contributed Itachi, eyeing Shisui with a distant and vaguely surprised reproach.

Shisui groaned. "Thank you, Itachi." He sighed through his nose and closed his eye, taking a steadying breath, because man did he fuck that up. He fucked that up big time. Tripped into a volcano fucked it up.

"You know what you gotta do?" Zabuza drawled.

Shisui grimaced. "Grovel?" he tried weakly.

"Grovel," agreed Zabuza solemnly. "You dumb fucking bastard," he added.

Shisui wasn't a complete fucking idiot. He didn't go after Hatake immediately while his own blood still sang with outrage. He left the cave and turned right, away from the captain's chakra signature, and let the seabreeze cool his temper for a long moment as he stared blankly out over the waves.

Inevitably, when a team lived together, they learned little pieces of each other - their personalities, preferences, pasts. Some things were free game, others unspoken taboo unless mission relevant or the one to whom that shadowed piece of history belonged brought it up first, and even then it was handled gingerly, almost reverently in acknowledgement of its owner. Shisui's time with Orochimaru and the scars it had left on his mind was one of those; Itachi's actions during the Fall was another, and Zabuza's Academy massacre yet another. All of these had, however, been broached among their team, often late at night when the moon was high and lips loosened from heartache or that abnormally strong sake that Zabuza had found somewhere he wouldn't name. But of all the nightmares Hatake had lived through, the one none of them had ever dared to mention was the one with the teammate whose eye he still carried. And Shisui had just thrown that in his face over being left out of a mission, like the captain hadn't essentially pulled Shisui out of his personal hell.

Shisui added that to his Top Ten Fuck-ups list.

Then he went to find Hatake.

It was jarring, seeing the captain without any of his hounds by his side. He looked strangely lonely, standing by himself on a rocky outcropping facing the sea much the way Shisui had for the last twenty minutes. Grey-silver hair stuck out the back of his bandana, and a standard katana was strapped over the blue-grey Kiri hunter-nin armor.

Shisui stopped a couple meters behind him. Would the captain kill him? Unlikely. Would the captain grievously injure him? Possibly, but Shisui kind of figured he deserved that. Hatake wasn't known for losing his temper, but if ever there was a time, it was probably now.

"Taichou," said Shisui to his back, and took a deep, fortifying breath. "I apologize for my actions earlier. I didn't mean to question your judgement or challenge your orders, and bringing up - um, your teammate - was way out of line." He bowed at the captain, not a shinobi's one-knee-down, but folded neatly at the waist because this breach of conduct had been only second insubordination and first the kind of faux pas one made outside of rank. The etiquette of apology for this had been bred and trained into him both, and ideally he'd be in civilian clothes to emphasize his remorse, but the war didn't leave the option for indulging nitpicky, upper society shinobi clan formalities. He straightened again after a careful pause but kept his head down, glancing at the captain's back through his eyelashes. No response. The wind from the sea battered his face and his ears, but Hatake made no move, no indication that he'd seen or heard him at all.

Unfortunately, Shisui's damned Uchiha pride reared its head again. Sure, he'd already decided he'd take whatever beatdown or punishment the captain dished out without complaint, since he really did deserve it, but not before he argued his point - Uchiha manners be damned. Shisui gritted his teeth. "Sir, please. I can fight. I fought during the last war, and I might be a little out of practice, but I - "

"Shisui," Hatake interrupted, finally turning to face him. Shisui snapped his jaw shut, jerking his head up and back in an instinctive flinch before catching himself in time for Hatake's dark eye to catch him and pin him in place. "I'm not doubting your abilities as a shinobi. I didn't want your first major mission back to be extracting prisoners of war who probably have been tortured."

Oh.

Oh.

Scratch that. Shisui was a complete fucking idiot. "Ah," he said for lack of anything else to say, his voice small. He stared at the ocean past the captain's shoulder, because he really, really couldn't look at him right then.

"Shisui," Hatake repeated insistently, and Shisui's eye drew to his reluctantly, like an errant genin getting told off for dropping a bucket of paint on an unsuspecting civilian. "The kind of trauma you've been through doesn't go away overnight. We don't know what condition the kids will be in when - if - we find them. I don't want you to regress because you pushed yourself too hard on this."

Shisui huffed a bitter laugh. "I don't know if I can live with myself if I don't, sir. Especially on this."

Hatake scrutinized him for a long moment, his dark eye locked intently on Shisui's. "Fine," he said at last. "Extraction team. If you feel like it's too much for you at any point, get out and meet up with Sai and Hinata."

Shisui blew out a relieved breath. "Yes, sir," he said.

Hatake grimaced. "Please don't call me that," he said, pained.

"I can't do that, sir," Shisui said promptly. "Rank is very important during war, and we wouldn't want to set a bad example for all those impressionable kids back there."

Hatake eyed him balefully. "You're one of my team," He complained halfheartedly. "It's bad enough that Momochi does it."

"Aw, he does it because he knows it makes you uncomfortable," Shisui drawled.

Hatake sighed, and his shoulders slumped a little. "I know," he said despondently, turning back just a little for a last look at the ocean. He tilted his head up a little and inhaled, and he must have smelled something even if Shisui couldn't, because he said, "Let's head back. The fish is done."

"Yes, sir," said Shisui, straight faced, and Hatake glared at him with particular vitriol before stalking past.

He paused after just a few steps. "Oh, and Shisui?" Hatake said lightly over his shoulder, and his sakki knocked the breath from Shisui's lungs for a split second before it vanished again. "Never bring up Obito again."

* * *

 _"Ah, Shisui-kun. I have something that will make you scream."_

* * *

Finding the Jurojinmaru proved much less discouraging with the captain's intel. Nobu swooped down to Shisui's team just after midday with coordinates and a one-word message: found.

The cold burn of adrenaline seeped into his veins as he stared at the scrap of paper.

"Sensei?" Sai prompted. Shisui handed him the paper.

"Go," he said, and Sai's ink creature whirled in a wide arc.

They found Itachi's team with Zabuza's on an island with rocky beaches and a bluff between them and the great hulking warship barely in view on the horizon. Itachi did not look up as they approached, and neither did Gaara, crouched predatorily at the edge with his eyes locked on the distant shape, but Temari waved at them, just a wiggle of her fingers. Further along the ridge, the captain's motionless figure blended in with a copse of thin trees.

Neji's eyes bulged, mirrored by Hinata after a moment. "Team Byakko located," he said, and Itachi huffed out a breath that was a little too quiet to really be a sigh of relief.

"Six additional prisoners located," said Hinata, her eyes steady and intent. "The nine are spread out between a total of four cells and one interrogation chamber in the lower deck."

Shisui swallowed the creeping dread sending icy fingers through his lungs. "Who's in the interrogation chamber?"

Hinata was silent.

"Three Kiri shinobi, one Hanabi-ha shinobi, and Naruto," Neji answered for her.

The kids exchanged grim looks, except for Hinata, who stared far beyond at that something out of sight, the blood drained from her already pale face. Zabuza winced, a tiny movement that could have passed for a trick of the mind. Shisui closed his eye.

"The ship," said Hatake at last, crisply. He dropped an empty sheaf of paper and charcoal sticks down on the flattest rock. "Draw the basic layout and label where the prisoners and the seals are."

"They're fucking tiny," said Zabuza. "The seals. When they're activated, they're fifteen centimeters across. But you can break 'em on whichever side with force and a little chakra, the ink expands back out to original size. Miss and you'll waste your energy."

Hatake glanced up at Shisui. "From how far out can you hit one of those?" he asked neutrally.

Shisui eyed the diagram taking shape under the Hyuuga cousins' hands. "Farther out than this," he said with more confidence than he actually felt.

Hatake nodded. "Shisui, Itachi, Haku, and Neji. Entry here - " Neji automatically shuffled aside to let him tap a spot on the side of the ship lightly. " - through breaking this seal. Stairs on the right closest to holding cells and interrogation, route by your discretion. Exit by the same route. Extraction by Haku, then Sai will take them."

"I'll get the ones in interrogation, " Shisui volunteered. "That's going to need the fastest entrance and exit. I also need Neji's eyes."

"Punk does have eyes," Zabuza noted, deadpan. Shisui rolled his one, singular, eye, thank you Zabuza.

"I will release the prisoners in the holding cells," agreed Itachi. "Haku will accompany me."

"Sai and Hinata, stay in the air," Hatake directed. "Keep evacuated prisoners safe and take down any summons with distress messages."

"Not that it'd do 'em any good," Zabuza muttered under his breath. Shisui eyed him cautiously. Most days Zabuza kept his bloodthirst well in check, but today did not seem to be one of those days.

"Momochi," said Hatake with a little more emphasis than necessary. "Primary distraction. Top deck. Keep our people alive, keep their shinobi occupied. Gaara, focus on blocking off the side hatches with your sand. This entire operation is contingent on keeping the Kiri shinobi contained. Temari, guard him. Nobody touches Gaara."

"Don't need to tell me that. Sir," Temari tacked on belatedly. Zabuza crossed his arms but didn't respond except for an anticipatory glint in his eye.

"Once the prisoners are out, all of you reroute to destroying seals or crowd control," Hatake directed. "We have a very narrow window from start to end to knock those seals out. And make sure to get clear of the ship before it goes down."

It occured to Shisui how wildly optimistic they all were that four Anbu and six (but technically four) genin-level combatants could extract prisoners from and sink a ship with eighty enemy combatants aboard. Nobody had even batted an eye when Shisui'd brought it up the first time, like there was a collective I guess that's what's going to happen shrug before they moved on to planning. There was a helluva lot of shit that needed to come together for this not to fly completely off the rails, and one of those things was the gods' own luck. Incidentally, like the seven gods of luck for which the Kiri warships were named.

Shisui didn't have a very good track record with luck.

Someone knocked against his shoulder. He didn't flinch, because he'd heard Zabuza's uncharacteristically loud shuffle as the small squad packed up their equipment in readiness for the assault. "You're thinkin' too much, Konoha," he grinned, flashing pointed teeth before wrapping fresh bandages over his lower face. "It'll be fun."

Shisui grumbled inarticulately and straightened, cracking at least three vertebrae in his back and stirring the chakra from its dormant state deep beneath his skin. "You know," he said offhandedly. "You go through this and your secret's gone for good. You're not subtle."

Zabuza shrugged carelessly, but Shisui could see the tension still in his shoulders. "Eh," he said gruffly. "It's time. I'd like to make that little fucker sweat a little."

Shisui knew it wasn't that simple, knew there were consequences for this beyond what Zabuza ever deigned to reveal for keeping his identity secret for so long. But Zabuza unsheathed his blade with relish, the massive blade sliding free of its hilt, and he uncoiled with his sword in hand like a great wild cat eager for the hunt. Zabuza was not a creature meant for hiding - just stalking and hunting.

"Masks up," Hatake ordered, fitting the porcelain cat-mask over his own face.

Shisui flicked his custom-made apparently super special mask back down. "Haku, once I breach the ship, bring Neji through. Itachi'll follow." His eye tracked the tiny ship ticking its way across the horizon.

"Hai," said Neji, tucking the cloak around him a little tighter.

"Mark," said Hatake, and nodded at Shisui.

Shisui closed his eye, gathering his chakra. Beneath his eyelid, his Sharingan whirled to life, and every single one of his nerve endings lit up in a horrible, exhilarating blaze of power. One breath in. One breath out. He moved .

The ocean blurred to nothing beneath him. The world warped around him, distorted by his speed, and he had just a split second to focus chakra to bolster his shoulder before he was smashing through the seal and the wall of the ship, solid hardwood splintering like cheap rice paper screens under his attack.

A shinobi shouted, and metal slid off metal as someone behind him drew a sword, but Shisui's battle calm held as he drew his tanto, spinning to deflect a kunai off its edge effortlessly.

He opened his eye. One shinobi next to the door, posed to run. One shinobi next to the wall, katana drawn. One shinobi with another kunai drawn back to throw. One shinobi with his hands folded into a seal and chakra gathered in his palms.

Shisui stepped forward into a shunshin and then he was at the door. He caught the runner by the wrist, leaning forward to hurl him over his shoulder.

Another step. He knocked the ninjutsu user's hands aside and drove his tanto into his flak jacket, sliding his blade back out easily.

Turn, step. Shisui plucked the kunai, barely out of the next shinobi's hand, out of the air, twisted it around, and rammed it up under the shinobi's chin.

Spin, step. He slipped under the katana of the second shinobi, twisting it out of his grip and hurling it behind him, on an intercept with the flying body of the first shinobi, the runner. With a backhanded strike of his tanto, he slashed the swordsman's throat.

Shisui darted clear, landing in a crouch and pausing as the rest of the world caught up.

Four bodies hit the ground in quick succession. Shisui straightened, blood dripping off his tanto, and glanced out at the hole he'd blown in the side of the ship during his maiden voyage as a human battering ram. The black-inked remnants of the strengthening seal spiderwebbed on either of the splintered sides. Light glinted off the ice mirror forming at the gaping hole.

Neji stepped through first into the ship, and though he did not even blink at the blood and bodies, Haku's eyes creased slightly in a frown beneath his mask.

"Has your sensei begun his attack yet?" Shisui asked, flicking the blood off his blade discreetly.

At that moment, the entire ship lurched and shuddered, and Shisui anchored his feet to the floor as the four bodies went flying, piling up against the far wall with a table and three stacks of crates.

"Yes," said Neji unnecessarily, as Zabuza's gleeful "Hey, motherfuckers!" carried faintly from above. A series of thumps in quick succession rattled the ship again as Gaara's sand thudded into place over each hatch one by one.

Itachi slipped into the room with them just a second before sand slithered over the gap between the mirror and the wall of the ship, sealing them into the dark. His long hair was windblown, the only sign of his breakneck dash across the ocean. He turned towards Neji. "Ni?" he prompted.

"Clear," Neji answered.

"Ichi, with me," Itachi said without preamble. He tilted his head towards Shisui. "Juu." Shisui nodded back as his cousin slipped out into the hallway, Haku shadowing him closely.

Thirty seconds ticked past as the ship rocked, battered by Zabuza's assault outside. Shisui counted them carefully, eye half-closed as he reached out with his chakra-sense. A small pack of chakra signatures hurried past before he sensed the hall was empty.

"Clear?" he asked in an undertone.

"Clear," Neji confirmed, sliding up next to him.

Shisui took a breath and spun the tanto around in his hand. "Let's go, Ni."

"Left," said Neji. "Six shinobi in the next hallway."

"Copy that," said Shisui, and gathered the chakra behind his eye as he strode towards the door. "Stay behind me. And keep quiet," he added. "The quieter we are, the better this will work."

He turned out the door and let the genjutsu go, spinning it out ahead of him as he prowled down the hallway. A Kiri nin rounded the corner and swerved abruptly to avoid him, charging on past without a second glance, and two more clattered after him. Neji inhaled sharply, but none of the Kiri nin raised the alarm at two masked intruders walking boldly through the bowels of their warship. Shisui ducked into the doorway down to the lower deck.

The stairwell was shadowed but empty. The smell of brine almost overpowered that of the damp wood, and the boards beneath his feet creaked ominously.

The genjutsu tugged lightly on his chakra as it entrapped another trio, and Shisui paused to let them pass, clomping heavily on up past them. "Which way is clearest?" he asked, in a low voice.

"Straight at the next intersection, and then a left at the following," Neji replied. "Two shinobi standing at the second doorway to the right."

Footsteps thundered far above them, and in the distance Shisui could hear metal clash on metal mingled with war cries and shrieks of pain. Chakra bloomed, and in response the ship rocked to the side, wooden beams groaning against the assault. Shisui pushed his genjutsu a little further and ghosted past an open doorway just before two swordsmen hurtled out of it, skidding down the corridor towards the stairs to the next deck.

Just a little further to the interrogation chamber.

The air shifted, and Shisui froze in his tracks. Malevolent chakra rolled through the hallway, as thick and heavy as a thunderstorm, and the walls themselves seemed to bend under the onslaught. Hatred as intense and solid as a wall hit Shisui, and he flinched, scrabbling frantically for the threads of his genjutsu as they slipped from his control. His heart clenched, constricting his chest, and he swallowed hard against the dread rising in his throat. Shisui had felt this chakra twice before - most recently, the day Naruto found out he could be stabbed through the stomach and walk away without a scratch, though even then the Kyuubi's chakra had been nowhere near as potent.

Neji gasped audibly behind him, half-choking on the air in his lungs, and Shisui whipped around. Every muscle of Neji's body was taut, his knuckles white on the hilt of his tanto as he gritted his teeth against the press of sakki.

"Ni, what do you see?" Shisui demanded, reaching out a steadying hand.

"Fox," he gasped out, yanking his arm free and stumbling backwards out of Shisui's grip. He collided gracelessly with the wall but didn't seem to notice, his chakra fluctuating in his agitation.

Shit.

"Change of plan," Shisui said sharply. "Ni, switch with Itachi; I need him here now. You and Ichi get the rest of the prisoners out. Go!" he snapped, when Neji didn't move. Neji jerked at that, turning on his heel and sprinting in the opposite direction.

Shisui took a deep breath, throwing off the killing intent as best as he could. This time, when he gathered his chakra, he didn't just hold it there behind his eye in preparation for a genjutsu. He let it burn, let the sharp agony spiral through his eye as it whirled madly, spinning, spinning, spinning, until the white-hot rush coursed through the rest of his body and sent daggerpoints blazing through his chakra system.

Mangekyo.

A huff of hysterical laughter rushed from his lungs at the sheer power coursing through his veins. The world opened up before him in impossible acuity, every shadow of every crevisse sharpened beyond comprehension, and the haze of chakra licking at the walls glowed abrasively - the path to his target.

Now.

He blurred forward in a shunshin.

From the outside, the interrogation room looked no different from any of the other doors he had passed - wooden, slightly rickety - and were it not for the old bloodstains not quite scrubbed out of the floor, a passerby might have mistaken it for a storage room.

Shisui's fury bubbled beneath his skin. He slammed one open hand into the door and it shattered, splintering inwards as he burst into the room.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a kunoichi tied to chair with wounds that Shisui forced himself not to think of how she must have gotten them. Another young kunoichi stood over her, fully armored, fear overpowering the aggression in the set of her feet and her shoulders.

Two more shinobi loomed over a small body tied to a rough hewn wooden table, and it was on that small figure that Shisui's eye fixed. His limbs were limp, lax in the bonds that tied him down, but the chakra that poured from his form blazed like an inferno as he sat up, and the rope tying him down crumbled away into ash.

Naruto opened his eyes, and the burning, unadulterated hatred in their crimson glint stole Shisui's breath and cut his own rage.

Chakra bubbled over Naruto's skin, and he lashed out suddenly with a clawed hand. One of the Kiri nin went flying with a muted cry, cut short when his body hit the wall with a loud thump and crack of splintered wood before crumpling to the floor. The second shinobi shrank back, but Naruto didn't even look at him. His eyes locked onto Shisui's mask - and beneath the black glass of the eyeholes, his whirling Sharingan - and the bandages over his mouth shifted as he snarled soundlessly.

"Steady," Shisui cautioned, raising both hands placatingly. His tanto was still in his hand and he hoped the blade wouldn't set Naruto off, but Naruto's glare never left his face. "Easy," said Shisui, stepping forward slowly.

A muffled yelp and scuffle stole Shisui's attention and out of the corner of his eye, a flash of movement caught his eye and he whirled, hurling his tanto at the Kiri kunoichi before she could cut the throat of her prisoner. The blade flashed through the air and the Kiri nin cried out it skewered her sword hand to the wall behind her.

"Easy!" Shisui repeated, whipping back around and Naruto's aborted lunge left him half-crouched on the table now that his intended target had already been neutralized. "No danger here. Let's calm down now," Shisui suggested, layering the words with genjutsu.

For a moment, Shisui hoped that would work, hoped that his words alone would lull Naruto back into that bleary state as it had the last time, and failing that, the genjutsu as Itachi had done with Gaara. But Naruto jerked his head to the side like a dog shaking off an irritating fly even as the chakra cloaking him like a sentient second skin shifted and bubbled, and his glare returned in full force.

Shisui realized with a flash of insight that there was something very different about Naruto's transformation this time. His eyes were not blank with bloodlust, the chakra drawn from the Kyuubi unconsciously. This time, they reflected a sharp, cunning intelligence and a harsh cruelty so unlike Naruto it took Shisui's breath away. "Roku," he said warningly.

A clatter pulled at his attention again, with a blur at the edge of his vision as the Kiri nin made a break for it, but when Shisui started to turn, Naruto growled low in his throat, a deep and threatening rumble. His eyes fixed on Shisui only, paying no attention to his former captors fleeing the room.

Screw secrecy. Shisui needed to put an end to this before the Kiri team alerted someone higher on the chain of command or the Kyuubi well and truly ripped free of its cage.

"Naruto," he said, but the crimson eyes showed no recognition, only intent as Naruto tensed into a low couch, his body coiled to pounce.

Suddenly, Naruto straightened, and interest flashed in his eyes. "Stay out of my way," he said in startlingly clear voice. He turned, took two steps to the far wall, and punched straight through the wooden planks without a break in stride.

"Shit!" someone yelped from the other side. The Kyuubi's chakra intensified as Shisui darted to the opening, only to jerk back as a body flew through the gap. The man was dead, scorched claw tracks scored through his chest so deep Shisui could see the furrows left in his heart. He grimaced and stepped over him.

Kyuubi-Naruto moved quickly and with devastatingly brutality.

Shisui sensed movement behind him, and Itachi's chakra, still tightly controlled behind him as his cousin evaluated the situation. "Get her out," Itachi said in a low voice, jerking his head to the kunoichi still bound to the chair. "Let me handle this."

Shisui hesitated. "Itachi," he warned. "He's not himself. It's - "

His cousin paused almost imperceptibly. "Trust me," he said, and Shisui let him pass.

Shisui whirled to the kunoichi tied in the corner, who stared up at him with wide eyes. "What - " she rasped, but Shisui didn't have the time or really the ability to explain any of this entire mess to her.

Instead, he scooped his tanto back off the floor and set about severing the ropes that he'd her to the chair. She lurched forward when he sliced through the last and he caught her instinctively before she could fall face forward as her legs gave out beneath her. "Steady," he murmured as she flinched back away from him. He shrugged the cloak off his shoulders and wrapped it around her bruised body. "I'm going to pick you up," he told her. And then, regretfully, and with a thick genjutsu layered over his voice, he said, "You will think today is all a dream."

She stared at him with wide eyes and licked her lips before nodding, a little dazed as her gaze unfocused. She couldn't be much younger than Shisui himself, but with her shaved head and yellow-purple bruises distorting half her face, she looked much older. Shisui scooped her up carefully, but even still she shuddered in his arms, her head lolling against his chest. Shisui's eye caught on the chakra suppression seal standing out stark against the skin of her forehead, a ring of ink with six spokes, and he fought down his own sympathetic shiver.

The kunoichi didn't seem to notice, because her eyes fixated just above Shisui's head. "Nice hair," she croaked. Shisui grimaced beneath the mask.

Naruto snarled once behind them, that malignant chakra spiking for just a moment as he slunk back into the room, scuttling backwards to keep his eyes on Itachi.

Shisui tensed, opening his mouth to say something, anything, but the sight of the hold beyond momentarily stole his ability to breathe. Naruto had been there less than a minute, but he had strewn destruction and corpses in his wake - flak jackets burned through like they were nothing, glass lanterns smashed on the ground with their iron fixtures melted into slag, blood pooled on the floor.

Itachi stepped through the gap after him and ordered, "Calm," forcefully, and every hint of the Kyuubi's chakra vanished abruptly, a fire snuffed out in the blink of an eye. Itachi caught Naruto's limp body before it could hit the floor.

Shisui sucked in a sharp breath. "What did you do?" he asked, alarmed, stretching out his senses until he could just make out Naruto's own chakra pulsing at his core. But even that relief couldn't overcome the sinking dread of the implications that Itachi had suppressed not just a jinchuuriki, but the bijuu itself.

Itachi looked up just briefly, grimly, giving a flash of the three scything blades revolving slowly in the bloody glow of his eyes. "Go," he said.

Never let it be said that Shisui couldn't prioritize. He ignored the charred, bloody path Naruto had carved through the bowels of the ship and turned, careful not to jar the kunoichi. He made his way out the door and almost tripped over the body of a Kiri shinobi sprawled just past the entrance. Two more lay just beyond them, and he was fairly certain that Itachi had left several more in his trail on his way from the holding cells. Without the bonfire of the Kyuubi's chakra, Shisui could sense the chakra signatures nearing, bristling and snapping with angry and alarmed intent. "I'm going first," he tossed over his shoulder to Itachi, and to the kunoichi, "Hold on."

The kunoichi slurred, "What?" and Shisui hurled himself into a shunshin. He slammed into the wall at the first intersection, turning so his back took the brunt of the blow, and bounced off, but the corridors were so narrow that it couldn't be helped, not if he wanted to stay in the shunshin. He ricocheted upstairs and almost careened into a wall of ice, skidding to a stop just centimeters away. The kunoichi sucked in a gasp and her eyes rolled up in her skull as she passed out, which was probably a good thing. Shisui was surprised it hadn't happened earlier.

The ice cracked on the side, creating an opening just big enough for Shisui to squeeze through. "Apologies," said Haku tersely. "A contingent pursued us from the other side." The mirror opposite shuddered on cue, something - or someone - battering against it.

"Did you get everyone out?" asked Shisui, ducking into the doorway. Someone had piled the corpses in the corner, and Neji stood next to mirror filling in the gaping hole in the side of the ship. He didn't turn around, but Shisui didn't doubt he'd watched them arrive.

Carefully, Haku took the kunoichi from Shisui's arms. "Yes," he answered, striding easily towards the mirror despite her deadweight. "There's only Roku left." He stepped into the mirror and vanished, and far beyond an answering flash heralded his arrival at the mirror's pair. A white shape dove sharply to meet them - Sai's creature.

Itachi slipped into the room then, Naruto draped across his arms. "Pursuit is imminent," he said with far more calm than a situation like this really deserved, and Shisui turned on his heel as Haku leapt back through the mirror once again and stumbled, his breath audibly ragged.

Drawing fire chakra through his hand to his tanto came as second nature as Shisui took up a defensive position in front of the door, flexing each of his fingers in turn. The remains of the ice mirror on the right side of the door shattered, spraying icy shards that bounced harmlessly off Shisui's mask and armor, and with an almighty crash, the mirror on the left followed suit. Beneath the black glass, Shisui's Sharingan spun.

The air shifted, and Shisui formed rapid-fire handseals around the tanto in his hand and spat a shield of wind, catching the water bullets that shot towards him before pouncing forward through the remains of both jutsu. The ninjutsu wielder backpedaled desperately in the narrow hallway as another shinobi surged forward, kunai in one hand and wire in the other.

Shisui jerked his tanto back before it could be snared, kicking out as he launched himself in a backwards flip. He landed lightly and lunged forward instead of continuing his retreat, catching his opponent by surprise. The other shinobi brought up his kunai between them, but Shisui batted it out of the way with his vambrace and stepped in close, sliding his tanto up and under the shinobi's flak jacket. The man gasped and choked, and Shisui snatched the kunai from his nerveless fingers, snapping it up to deflect the blade of another shinobi as he struggled to wrench his tanto free.

Two more shinobi in the room, more beyond the doorway. Shisui jumped backwards to give himself more room and a kenjutsu wielder pursued, his narrow blade lashing out in a graceful sweep. Shisui ducked, whirled, and leaned into a shunshin. His world blurred and sharpened at once. He darted forward, slamming bodily into the kenjutsu wielder, and his chakra coiled beneath his skin.

Shisui was fire-natured, but lightning came easy to him. "Raiton: Yukihyou," he growled, and from the crackle of lightning at his shoulders, a leopard formed and pounced in a heartbeat, tearing through the air with yellow-white fangs and the suggestion of fur. It caught the kenjutsu specialist in its jaws, throwing him backwards into his comrade with the heady stench of ozone and burnt flesh, and charged into the doorway. Someone cried out, and with a sharp crackle, several bodies flew through the air, hitting the walls with harsh thuds.

Shisui narrowed his eye and raised his tanto once more.

"Sensei!" Neji shouted behind him.

Shisui threw a glance over his shoulder in time to see Itachi slip out of the hole to the outside, Neji on his heels. He threw himself after them, swinging out onto the side of the ship. The sunlight battered his eye after so long in the murkiness of the ship's bowels. Crouched next to him, Haku held one hand out and ice spread out until the entire hole had been sealed once more.

"Ichi, with me to the top deck," Itachi directed. He glanced at Shisui. "Come when you are ready."

Shisui nodded sharply, and his cousin was gone in a blur, Haku leaping up after him. He turned to Neji, coiled tense at his side. "Ni, point me at those seals," he said grimly, adjusting his grip on his tanto.

He threw a cursory genjutsu over the two of them as they slipped across the outside of the ship, to deflect attention, an illusion that would work if only because the battle on the top deck was much louder and flashier. The ocean swelled, and Shisui braced himself with his hand as the ship tilted precariously, battered by a barrage of suiton. The spray showered him and Neji both, and they inched along carefully.

"Here," said Neji, tapping on the damp wood.

Shisui flipped his tanto around in his hand and slammed it clean through the side of the ship, the fire chakra burning through the seal. He nodded at Neji. "Next," he prompted.

Sand erupted in front of them as a shinobi burst through a hatch that had been covered by Gaara's sand. The sand swarmed back into place, but not before two more slid out of the narrow opening. A fourth shinobi screamed, caught by the sand, and a loud squelch cut off his voice. Neji tensed, ready to lunge as the team sprinted up towards the battle on the top deck, but Shisui threw out his arm to block him. Fighting wasn't their mission, not yet, and not until they had to.

Four seals on the top deck, another four above water, another four below. Shisui let himself drop beneath the surface, plunging beneath the waves with a hand on the hull to guide him. The water, ice-cold, shocked his lungs and for a moment he fought the urge to breathe in. The moment passed; he turned to Neji, who pointed towards the stern.

Even just below the ocean's surface, sound and chakra alike was muffled, softened by the water around them. Shisui couldn't sense the massive bursts of chakra exploding on the top deck anymore as the rest of his team fought to buy him time, couldn't hear the clash of metal on metal or the shouts and screams. He could almost forget everything but his mission, and as he slammed his chakra and his tanto into the first seal, this isolation both comforted him and lent him a sense of urgency.

Neji let out a muffled cry as they approached a seal, grabbing for Shisui's shoulder. He turned, and a massive shape shot towards them through the water. He shoved Neji hard, out of the path of the charging shark, and barely managed to haul himself to the side of the snapping teeth. The summon slammed into the side of the ship, sending the entire vessel rolling to the side with a groan. Neji lunged from the opposite side and brought his tanto down precisely on the creature's eye. It dispelled in a cloud of bubbles, and Shisui didn't have the chance to consider relaxing before another barreled forward in its wake.

Despite his aching lungs, Shisui's shunshin worked just as well underwater as he flashed forward to meet the beast. Even chakra-enhanced, his tanto bounced off the toughened skin harmlessly, but the force of the blow knocked it backwards and gave Shisui time to plunge the blade in its eye and send it back to the land of the summons.

His lungs burned and he surfaced with a gasp, glancing around. A dark-haired shape floated a few meters away and he thought it was Neji, until he remembered that Neji had dyed his hair lighter. The shape clarified into the body of a Kiri shinobi, and when he looked around he could see others dotting the waves like so much flotsam, leaking blood into the water. He twisted in the water until he saw Neji's head bobbing just beyond him, his mask tilted towards Shisui. Neji acknowledged him with a jerk of his head, back towards the ship: four underwater seals. Shisui took a deep breath and submerged again.

Even under the water, the seals burned under his touch.

Shisui jerked his blade out of the hull as Neji's chakra pulsed in warning and alarm. Shisui whirled as best he could as something crashed into the water behind him. His tanto, already in his hand, clashed against the Kiri nin's kunai and he kicked out.

The Kiri shinobi shoved him forcefully, and Shisui's back hit the hull of the ship. With his Sharingan's warning, Shisui regretfully substituted himself with a corpse in time for it to be pummeled with a stream of boiling water. He jerked his hand frantically at Neji: get out of the water.

Neji surfaced a split second after Shisui, leaping high up out of the way, and Shisui sent a blast of a raiton at the Kiri nin as he erupted from the water. The shinobi screamed as the electricity ripped through him, trapped by the water. When he fell backwards, the lightning was gone and the man was dead.

Shisui alighted on the surface of the water and turned to Neji once again. Although he appeared unruffled, Neji's chakra roiled uneasily. Two more underwater seals.

The initial shock from plunging into the waves had worn off, but now a bone-deep chill settled in, stiffening Shisui's muscles and slowing his movements. Had he not had greater self control he would have shivered; even in the uncertain lighting and the moving water distortion he could see Neji trembling in bits and starts.

When they surfaced after the last, Neji said, "The teams on the top deck appear pressed but without significant injury."

The sky, relentlessly blue, dimmed above them, and the wind whipped up with a fervor, catching their hair and the edges of their clothing. Shisui glanced up at the gathering clouds.

"The Stormbringer," Neji said, his voice wary and almost reverent.

"Aa," Shisui agreed grimly. "Let's pick up the pace."

With Neji at his back, he crested the rails and landed neatly in a corner of the top deck. At the very back of the stern, he could see Gaara crouched with his hands flat against the deck as he fought to suppress the shinobi battering the many hatches along the sides of the ship, his mask knocked slightly askew to bare his snarl of concentration. Shisui could feel the massive waves of chakra pouring from his too-fragile form into his sand and wondered what color his eyes were.

Temari stood above her brother defensively, her own chakra a candle's flame to Gaara's bonfire. She swung her tessen and unleashed a powerful gust that sent two shinobi tumbling backwards to the middle of the ship, directly into the path of Kubikiribocho on Zabuza's backswing.

Zabuza's face was bare, or at least his porcelain mask had been knocked to the side of his face as he cut a large swathe through the shinobi who couldn't dodge fast enough. A body hit the railing; another arched gracefully over the side and landed with a distant splash. Itachi slipped in and out of his path, the dimming light flashing off his katana as he wove under Kubikiribocho with languid ease. Itachi's mainstay was genjutsu; Shisui couldn't see the traps he wove that snared his targets like fish in a net to be more easily speared.

Above them, Haku's mirrors gleamed forebodingly, Haku himself bouncing between them fast enough that Shisui couldn't have caught his movements if not for his Sharingan. Senbon peppered the combatants on the deck, and as he watched, one kunoichi fell with nary a gurgle, taken down mid-lunge by a senbon in the eye. At the prow, the captain wielded not raiton but douton with ease, rocks forming at his back to break the gulls that formed from the waves and dove at him.

"Sensei," Neji prompted, drawing his attention from the battle and the would-be's and the blooms of chakra.

Neji sidled along the rail, and Shisui followed, weaving a stronger genjutsu over the two of them to encourage eyes to slide off them. Tanto, seal. Easily done.

Then the ship rattled beneath his feet, followed by an earsplitting crash, and he braced himself against the side of the ship before he could be thrown overboard. A shinobi leapt over their heads, charging the captain with a blade that wavered with water chakra, then another, and another in what seemed a never-ending stream.

"They went through the hull," Neji muttered incredulously.

They'd discovered the ruined seals, then. Time was up.

"Hold on," Shisui said, and grabbed Neji by the shoulder. He hurled them into a shunshin clear across the deck, barely over the sweep of Kubikiribocho and and between Haku's senbon. His genjutsu tore to shreds above them, but Neji's tanto pierced the final seal in a blast of untamed chakra and Shisui grinned fierce under his mask even as he spun to deflect the katana that came crashing down towards Neji's head.

He spat lightning at the Kiri shinobi's face, but even as the man cried and stumbled backwards, two more took his place.

It started to rain.

It did not begin with a trickle, but a downpour, as though the ship had unknowingly sailed under a great waterfall. With the sharingan's split-second warning, Shisui tackled Neji towards the aft cabin and its overhang as the heavens opened up. Temari was thrown to the deck by the deluge, and Gaara's head jerked towards her, summoning his sand to shield her from a hail of kunai.

But with his sand gone, the hatches flew open with a bang, one by one, and shinobi swarmed over the rails.

"Raiton: Yukihyou!" Shisui spat as a squad swarmed him and Neji, cornered against the cabin's wall. His leopard ripped free of him and pounced with a crackling growl, sinking teeth in one too slow to dodge and scattering the rest. Its tail lashed as it leapt towards its prey, charging in a glowing streak across the length of the deck.

The ship pitched ominously, battered by rolling waves and screaming winds. Neji slipped as he was drawing his tanto back from where he'd scored a deep gash across a kunoichi's thigh and hit the railing hard. Shisui lunged after him, but he caught himself before he went over the edge.

"Get out!" the captain shouted, his voice almost drowned out by the rattle of rain pounding against the deck. His white mask flashed in the darkness of the storm as he slammed his katana into one shinobi's chest and a douton into another's. He pounced at a third, who met him with a katana in one hand and a cyclone trailing down from the clouds in the other.

Immediately, an ice mirror glinted as it froze the air, and a water whip cracked harmlessly against its face as Haku reached out the other side to grab Temari and Gaara. The mirror arch he left behind crumbled in his wake. Shisui grabbed Neji and hurled them both backwards, weaving through the advancing shinobi until they cleared the railing as Hatake disengaged from the Stormbringer with a vicious swipe of his sword and leapt up the forward mast easily to the topmost yard.

"Raiton: Raijuu," the captain growled, ignoring the shinobi bounding up after him as his hands blurred through seals.

The chakra emanating from the captain exploded outwards in an uncontrolled eruption. Shisui's hair stood on end, and he yanked himself and Neji into a shunshin as the stormclouds rumbled ominously.

"Holy shit!" Zabuza shouted, his voice carrying in the wind above the howl of the rain.

A great wolf sprang from the clouds, formed of blue-white lightning, and the heady scent of ozone slammed into Shisui, hundreds of meters away. It rivaled a bijuu in size, matched one in wildness if not hatred, and sparked a collective cry of shock and fear from the shinobi aboard the warship.

The Raijuu caught up the Jurojinmaru in its jaws as if it were no bigger than a rabbit and ripped it asunder, tossing the remains of the largest mast into the waves as tiny figures scattered, thrown free or electrocuted or both. The creature's fangs left deep punctures in the hull, and a second bite tore a gaping hole through the side of the ship as lightning danced across the deck and through the waves. The ship's sails caught fire, sending flames and smoke spiraling into the clouds.

Its target thoroughly savaged, the wolf crackled away into nothing as the ship groaned and listed. Zabuza's distinctive chakra flared; a massive tidal wave slammed the hull, and its prow pointed skyward as it gradually capsized.

"Kami," Shisui muttered fervently. His pulse thundered in his neck, the adrenaline singing in his veins at being so close to such rampant destruction.

"I was not aware the captain had such a jutsu in his repertoire," Neji said, his voice tight with wariness and awe.

Shisui blew out a startled laugh. "I don't think anyone did. That kind of jutsu's an army-killer."

"Do you have such a jutsu, Sensei?" Neji asked.

Shisui snorted indelicately. "I'm not really a frontal assault kind of shinobi." He let his Mangekyo whirl apart, back into three tomoe. The drain on his chakra abated abruptly as he blinked, reorienting himself in a world that had only three dimensions now.

Itachi materialized out of a shunshin beside them, inscrutable in the wake of the pitched battle. Blood streaked his armor and soaked his sleeve, and his ponytail seemed a little shorter to Shisui. "Pursuers?" he asked.

"No," answered Neji. "The captain has withdrawn to the northwest, and the crew of the Jurojinmaru are focusing on rescue and recovery."

"We sank the fucking ship," Zabuza chortled gleefully, skidding out of his own shunshin with Kubikiribocho still braced against his shoulder. "I hated that thing so much. This is the best day of my life."

"What," Neji said blankly under his breath.

"I was kind of getting that vibe from you," Shisui said suspiciously. "Did you hate that ship? Why do you hate that ship?"

"They send the low caste shinobi who don't fall into line on those ships. Hard labor, easy to control," Zabuza said dryly. "Do you think I fucking fell into line?"

Shisui eyed him. "You? Never. But you weren't on the Jurojinmaru."

"Nope," Zabuza said cheerfully. "I hate all the warships. But the Jurojinmaru's Fukashima's baby, and he used to be my handler before he made captain. He was one sick bastard. I almost cut off his head, once," he added wistfully. "I didn't see daylight for fifty days."

"Oh, the Stormbringer captain guy," said Shisui. "Susano'o. He dead?"

Zabuza sighed regretfully. "Hatake fried him," he said mournfully. "Woulda liked to tear his heart out."

Shisui clapped his hands over Neji's ears. "Careful with your language around the youngsters," he said seriously, still giddy with post-battle adrenaline. "They're very impressionable."

Neji slapped his hands away irritably.

"We should rendezvous with the genin," Itachi cut in, which would have impatient if it had been anyone except Itachi.

Right. Rescued prisoners. Knocked-out formerly-Kyuubi Naruto. Sakura and Sasuke. Nine traumatized shinobi that had probably been tortured.

"Point me towards them, Ni," said Shisui, and yanked them both into a shunshin.

The base at Shiroisuna was named for its pure white beaches, which the recovered teams and Shisui's team were currently sullying with their bloodied and bedraggled selves.

"I'm uninjured, my chakra levels are fine, and I have iryou-jutsu training," Shisui snapped when the medic-nin threw out an arm to block him from entering the hospital tent. "How many medics do you have?"

The answer was 'not enough.' There were never enough medic-nin. Shisui shouldered his way into the depths of the tent.

Pallets lined the floor neatly; some of their occupants sat up to observe the chaos as it unfolded, but others did not even open their eyes. Their bandages were clean white, bruises yellowed and fading already.

Medic-nin and nurses, marked by strips of white around their arms or necks or heads, rushed past with trays of instruments and bandages in their arms, swarming the side of the tent cordoned off to receive the new arrivals. A nurse shoved a white bandana in Shisui's hands as she passed. "Get that mask and bloody armor off," she snapped.

"The mask stays on," Shisui called after her firmly, but stripped down to his chuunin-jounin greys and tossed his armor in the corner. He knotted the bandana around his neck and ducked into the arrivals section, cordoned off with canvas.

A kunoichi on his left shivered against the makeshift cot cobbled together from a narrow table and a blanket. Her hair was short and choppy, and she trembled under a thin sheet. Next to her was another young shinobi, completely motionless with his head lulling sideways. A medic-nin leaned over him, but even as he physically manipulated his patient's limbs, the man - the boy - did not so much as twitch.

Paper signs at the back rooms denoted 'surgery.' Shisui caught a glance of Sasuke lying prone on the table with eyes closed and very pale as a nurse pulled back the curtain to let in another carrying a bowl of water. He changed course abruptly, hurrying towards his room.

"Hold it, you can't go in there." A nurse slid in front of him, blocking his path, and Shisui pulled up abruptly before he could bowl her over. She glared up at him, unimpressed. "The sensei is working, and it's a very delicate surgery. Go triage room three." She turned on her heel in that no-nonsense, take-no-shit manner of all healthcare workers, and Shisui had no choice but give Sasuke's room one last glance before ducking into room three.

Room three held only three people. One was Naruto, blanket pulled up to his eyes, which were closed. Another was Sakura, knees pulled up to her chin as she huddled against the wall. The third was Sai with a white bandana wrapped around his wrist, who was to Shisui's blank surprise, holding a handful of green chakra over Naruto's prone body.

"I am faking it," said Sai serenely without glancing up. "There was no other way to keep Roku's face hidden from the rest of the medical staff." The genjutsu vanished, and he was left holding nothing. He put his hand back down, swaying slightly. "I may have underestimated my chakra use," he added, and his eyes rolled up in his skull as he collapsed backwards gently.

"Damn," Shisui muttered under his breath, and darted over to catch him before he could hit the ground. He reached out to find Sai's pulse, strong and steady, and lifted him carefully to the last empty cot at the side of the room. He turned back around and absently cast a light genjutsu, a small thing to muddy sound and encourage passersby to keep walking, then shoved his mask up on top of his hair.

He sighed, looking down at the battered children with tired eyes. Naruto's stillness was jarring. Even in his sleep, Naruto tended to cling, to cuddle, to sprawl out and kick, snuffle and snort in his sleep. With the blanket drawn halfway up his face, he could have been a corpse.

Beyond him, Sakura's face reflected a familiar blankness, though her eyes were open. Someone had draped a blanket around her shoulders, and though she had been gone only five days, her cheeks were hollow and gaunt. Shisui's chest tightened, but he turned a small smile in her direction. "Hi, Sakura-chan," he said.

Sakura didn't look up or acknowledge him, staring vacantly at the far wall.

Shisui took a deep breath and gathered healing chakra in his hand, moving forward slowly to Naruto's side. The skin on his hands was shiny and pink, but there were no other signs of recent damage to his body. He let the chakra fade. He couldn't do anything more for Naruto that the Kyuubi hadn't already, not from a healing standpoint. He leaned against the table instead, scrutinizing his next - and he suspected more difficult - patient. "How are you doing, Sakura-chan?" he prompted. "I'm going to come over to you, now," he added, when she stayed silent. "I just want to make sure you're okay."

He edged around the table slowly, keeping his hands in clear view, but Sakura still flinched when his chakra lit his hands once more. He paused. "Easy," he said soothingly. "This is healing chakra. Look - it's green. For growth, you know? For living things." He reached out carefully, and this time Sakura didn't move as he passed his hand over her body.

Sakura didn't have the healing factor from the Kyuubi to erase all her wounds. Her injuries mapped the story of her captivity in exquisite detail - every bruise, every open cut, every fractured bone.

Clinically, he noted the contusion on her head, the build-up of blood and other fluid beneath the scab. Swelling, bruising, and a stretched ligament in the left shoulder: recent dislocation. Her right collarbone had a hairline fracture, as well as two ribs.

The bruising trailed angry blotches down her side. As Shisui's hands drifted lower, following the broken blood vessels, Sakura's heartbeat picked up, then her breathing until she was gasping for air, eyes wild and fixed on nothing.

Shisui frowned and stepped back, lowering his hands. "Sakura-chan," he said, but she stared at him unseeingly, clutching her arms around herself until her fingernails dug harsh grooves in her arms.

With a touch to her temple, Shisui sent Sakura to sleep, and she slumped bonelessly against her cot. Her breath evened out gradually, and as he watched, her pulse slowed to normal as well.

Immediate danger gone, he breathed deeply, shoving down the spike of pure rage that set fire in his chest and pressed against his throat. He cut the chakra to his hand abruptly and closed his eyes.

For a moment he stood absolutely still, and the anger and hatred washed over him in a white-hot wave before he drew on what That Place had taught him while taking so much, too much - the lesson that Sakura had also had to learn these past few days. He drew the rage and the hate and he folded it down and swallowed it, leaving behind a hollowness and a bone-deep grief. The hospital tent was no place for killing intent.

Shisui let his shoulders drop and scrubbed a hand over his face, covering his closed eye. "Oh, Sakura-chan," he whispered, and if his voice cracked, nobody was awake to hear it.

Ten seconds Shisui allowed himself to grieve, then he gathered his chakra again. Broken bones and concussions were beyond his capabilities, but bruising he could fix.

Neji, who could see through genjutsu, pushed his way into the room sometime in the evening, a too-convenient two minutes after the chakra in Shisui's hands more or less sputtered out, wearing his dark glasses instead of his mask. He balanced a tray with a bowl of soup, two bento boxes, and chopsticks in his hands and very carefully did not look at Sakura, though Shisui had healed her bruises and the wound on her head.

"Neji-kun," Shisui greeted wearily. "Is that for me?"

"Hai," said Neji, and set the tray down at the low table. He picked up the second bento box and turned to go.

"Wait," said Shisui, and Neji paused, turning back from the room entrance. "Eat with me," he offered, eyeing Neji carefully. Physically, he looked unharmed despite a bandage and splint wrapped around his wrist, but his shoulders were held a little differently - more tense, but a little more hunched as well.

"If you would forgive the intrusion," Neji said stiffly, and yeah, the more uncomfortable he was, the more formal his language and behavior became. He sat across from Shisui in proper seiza and set the bento down with an air of a man led to execution.

Neji did not respond well to direct interrogation; he didn't offer information the way Team Byakko all cracked the instant Shisui or Itachi or Zabuza glared at them. As his sensei, Shisui had used a more roundabout method to gently pry out the information he sought.

Shisui opened his bento box, and only then did Neji mirror him. "Where's the rest of your team?" he asked first, separating out a piece of fish. Safe question: shinobi work related. One answer, already known. Limited thinking required.

"Temari and Haku are both in one of the triage rooms," Neji answered after a pause. "They were diagnosed with mild injuries and chakra exhaustion. Hinata-sama and Gaara are there as well, but neither are significantly injured. The medical staff has not had the time to request that they leave. Zabuza-sensei has been deflecting the staff who do approach."

Shisui hummed noncommittally. "It seems as though everyone will recover," he said lightly. Neji's hand hesitated just for a moment above his box. "Sasuke-kun's still in surgery, isn't he?" he continued.

"Hai," said Neji without looking up. Or, Shisui assumed so, since the shades covered his eyes.

Shisui took his time scooping up a bite of rice. "There's a very competent iryou-nin in there with him," he said, watching Neji for a reaction.

"Hai," Neji agreed again, picking through his greens almost demurely.

Shisui hid a frown. Nothing. "They'll be back on duty in no time," he said, and this time caught a twitch as Neji swallowed down words with his food.

Concern over duty, but what concerns? Scars? Lingering injuries? No, Neji wasn't one to see those as a barrier.

Mental status? Unlikely, not for one of Neji's personality. Neji was the type to ignore his feelings until they suddenly overwhelmed him, and when that day came he would undoubtedly be very shocked that such an event was possible.

Recapture, more injury, death? Possibly, but like the rest of the pack, Neji still saw himself and the rest of the pack with that innocent invincibility that had lent him the nerve to participate in the sinking of the Jurojinmaru without a thought for the odds. Perhaps that was something to talk to the others about - reminding the kids of their own mortality. That promised to be a fun conversation.

Back to the problem at hand. Shisui chewed on his fish absently, giving the makeshift hospital room a careful glance. Noise filtered in from the rest of the hospital tent - the clatter of metal, the shuffle of people sitting up or lying down or bustling about, the clack of chopsticks and spoons against bowls and trays. The burning rays of the waning sun filtered through the fabric of the tent and between the cracks between walls and ceiling, and on the opposite side the lanterns that lit in the main room of the tent glowed dimly. Sai, Naruto, and Sakura all lay in a neat row on their respective cots, each covered with a thin blanket, their chests rising and falling faintly with each breath. What could have so shaken - ah. His eye landed on the dark spokes inked on Sakura's forehead. Shisui let out a silent sigh. "You're concerned about the seals," he concluded, abandoning subtlety for a cleaner attack, but also because he was too tired for the dance. Neji stiffened. "What do you see, Neji-kun?" Shisui asked curiously.

For a moment, Neji did not answer. "It is hooked into their chakra systems," he said at last, "and not simply blocking the flow."

"Hm," said Shisui thoughtfully. "This particular seal is used to suppress the chakra of low to mid-level shinobi. It is quite stable, but an overload of chakra, as most jounin are capable of, will essentially shatter its structure. That's what Naruto did. The trick is that the chakra influx has to be internal, which is why none of the other prisoners have had their seals removed yet."

Neji mulled the information over, a slight frown crinkling his brow. "They can be removed, then."

"Yes," Shisui agreed. "Easily unravelled by someone versed in the sealing arts. But the closest we have to a seal master is the captain, and he's still overseeing cleanup." He eyed Neji, who uncharacteristically hunched in on himself a little further. Shisui suppressed the urge to sigh, because he really was too tired for a conversation like this. "The Hyuuga Caged Bird seal is beyond his abilities," he said gently, and Neji jerked, dropping his fish. "It's too old and too complex for him to unravel without a significant amount of time to study it. It's tied into your chakra system, your nervous system, hell, even your brain. Mess around with that and he could kill or cripple you in an instant. Hinata-chan already asked," he added.

A mixture of emotions - anger, vulnerability, resentment, and finally a bitter resignation flashed across Neji's face. "Hinata-sama did," he said more than asked, his voice monotonous.

"Aa," said Shisui, setting down his chopsticks delicately to give Neji his full attention. "Maybe she was your duty when you left the Leaf, but she sees you as a cousin, an older brother. This isn't Konoha; you don't have to define yourself only by what the Hyuuga demand."

Neji scowled - a slightly annoyed glare on anyone else - and opened his mouth, but Shisui didn't give him the chance to speak.

"I know you're not about to tell me that it's Clan business and to stay out of it," Shisui said mildly, taking up his chopsticks once again.

Neji snapped his mouth shut, and a muscle jumped in his jaw. "No, Sensei," he bit out deferentially.

Shisui turned to his rice to give Neji a few moments' respite. "You're not in Konoha anymore," he repeated. "Both of you have bigger things to worry about than your misplaced animosity. Yes," he added, when Neji jerked back in affront. "Animosity. You're teammates on the battlefield in a civil war for the country with the bloodiest history since the rise of the Hidden Villages. The only thing that should be between you two is absolute trust, not some grudge over something Hinata-chan had no control over."

"I do not resent Hinata-sama," argued Neji immediately, but flushed at the transparency of his own lie.

Shisui glanced around the tent pointedly. "Come on, Neji-kun," he said dryly. "This is about as private as we're going to get. I know you hate that seal and everything it stands for. I can tell that when you look at Hinata-chan sometimes, you're remembering something that makes you hate her so much, you wish she was dead."

Shisui knew his words had struck true because Neji didn't even flinch. He barely breathed. He sat motionless, chopsticks halfway lowered, and stared at nothing.

"Let me tell you a story," said Shisui conversationally, walking his chopsticks through his fingers absently like he did his kunai. "Once, there was a boy, a shinobi boy, lauded by his clan and his Village as a genius. He mastered techniques shinobi twice his age struggled with, and outran and outsparred others twice his size. His talents and skill were matched only by his teammate - his best friend and greatest rival. But their Village was at war, and so the boy and his rival went to war, side by side. In war, the boy strove to prove himself a shinobi and not just a little boy playing soldier, to honor his family and defend his Village. But as the boy and his rival fought at each others' backs, the boy grew jealous when he realized his rival's strength had surpassed his, easily taking on two chuunin at once while the boy struggled against one. The boy had not yet learned to use his abilities in a melee, his rival's specialty. Nevertheless, the resentment festered. The boy became the fastest shinobi on the field, but his rival was the strongest, and no matter how fast he ran, the boy couldn't seem to catch up.

"One day, the boy and his rival were travelling through a pass when they were ambushed. The boy was fast, of course, and darted in and out of battle, hassling enemy shinobi while his rival charged right in, attacking the shinobi head on. The battle was hard-fought, and difficult for the rival, who had used much chakra to keep up with the boy as he travelled, running much faster than he himself was comfortable with. The boy did not know this; he had only heckled his rival for moving so slowly. He had chakra yet to spare. His rival flagged. He dodged a blow too slow and it sent him flying into a tree. Desperately, with his chakra low, he cried out to the boy, his best friend, for help, because the rival knew the boy could run fast enough to rescue him. The boy saw his predicament, but at that moment the ugly resentment reared his head. Why should the boy be the only one who struggled in battle, who collected little wounds like loose coins? Let his rival bleed a little this time. The boy turned away, thinking he would swoop in after his rival was injured, and in the next moment, the enemy shinobi slashed his rival's throat and strewed his body across the path.

"The boy learned then what his pettiness had mutated into, but too late and at too high a cost. His vengeance left the pass covered in blood and guilt, with the body of his best friend in his arms. He had never wished his rival dead, but war brings out the ugliest piece of every shinobi, amplifies it and twists it back. Resentment, anger, hatred - these have no place between teammates, especially not in wartime.

"Even something as small and petty as jealousy can be fatal," Shisui said quietly. "And I can guarantee you this: when you finally have that person's empty corpse in front of you, no grudge, no matter how big or small, is ever worth it."

Shisui had lost his appetite, but he turned back to his food to save Neji from breaking the heavy silence. The back of his eye burned, tugging greedily at his chakra, but Shisui's control was too practiced to let it turn. "However the gods put you on this earth doesn't determine who you are. We're not wind-up toys, bound to the same path until we run out of life," Shisui told Neji, tapping his chopsticks gently against his bento for emphasis. "You can be more than what you were born. It's your choices that define you."

Shisui eyed Neji discreetly. His shoulders, still tense, had eased from their hunch, and the way he leaned forward suggested contemplation with only a little obstinance. If Shisui had given the same advice to Naruto, it would have backfired spectacularly, but Neji was ever good at taking direction.

"I understand, Sensei," said Neji soberly, finally glancing up to more or less meet Shisui's eye.

Shisui's lips twisted into a wry smile. "Logical, no?" He sighed noisily, because he way too tired and probably a little lightheaded from chakra loss. "Just quit being a brat," he said, only half faking his grumpiness. "You've got teammates you can trust, family you can trust. That's a hell of a lot. It really is."

* * *

 _"There's something different about you today. Found a bit of that fire again, hmm? Good. It is always more interesting when you struggle."_

* * *

Shisui woke from a light doze to the dulcet tones of a raw, piercing scream. He jackknifed upright, Sharingan blazing to life instinctively as he cast around for the threat.

He didn't find one - only Sakura, one long, unending shriek ripping from her throat as she screamed and screamed and screamed. His doujutsu subsided with a thought even as he vaulted up from his bedroll.

Naruto flailed, limbs tangling in his sheets as he fell off his cot with a thud and a muffled squawk.

"Hachi, divert," Shisui snapped at a startled and slightly wobbly Sai. "Don't let anyone in." He was at Sakura's side as fast as if he'd used a shunshin. He deflected the panicked swipe she aimed at his face when he leaned in front of her. "Hey," he said gently. "You're on the Hana-ha base 'Shiroisuna.' You're safe. Your team's fine. You're safe."

Sakura stared straight through him, unseeing, and he could see her pulse fluttering like a rabbit's in her throat. She didn't scream again, only sucked air into her lungs desperately, blowing it back out so fast and hard Shisui worried she might pass out from hyperventilating. Her eyes were huge and terror-stricken and luminous in her pale face. Shisui reached forward carefully and rested his hand on her shoulder, rubbing gently when she didn't flinch away.

Running footsteps skidded to a stop just outside the room - screams were unfortunately not uncommon in a shinobi field hospital, but they certainly didn't go ignored. "The patient is under Juu-sensei's care," he heard Sai say firmly from behind him. "Please do not disturb them at this time."

"I'm the ranking doctor here," responded a familiar voice severely. "Step aside."

Shisui felt a smile tugging at the edge of his mouth. "I'm afraid I cannot do that," Sai said neutrally.

"It's okay, Sai-kun," he said, even as he eased a pliant Sakura back down onto the bed and drew the covers back over her.

"Sensei?" Sai questioned dubiously.

"Aa, it's all right," Shisui reassured him over his shoulder. "Let her in."

"Sensei?" Sakura rasped in a voice that cracked halfway, her eyes drifting gradually towards his face.

"Yeah, Sakura-chan. You're safe," Shisui said again. "Hatake-taichou blew the Kiri ship to kingdom come yesterday. You're in a field hospital on Shiroisuna. Sasuke-kun is being treated next door. Naruto-kun's here, too," he added, just a touch wryly. "He's fine."

Naruto wriggled his head under Shisui's arm. "Hi, Sakura-chan!" he said cheerfully. "Don't be afraid. I just woke up so it's definitely not a dream, and look, I'm totally fine now!"

Sakura half-smiled, half-frowned, contorting her face into a strange grimace. She glanced briefly at Naruto before returning her scrutiny to Shisui. She squinted uncertainly. "Shisui-sensei?"

"Yeah?" said Shisui, raising his eyebrows encouragingly.

She licked her lips. "What happened to your hair?" she croaked.

Naruto did a double take. "Sensei!" he cried, alarmed, as Shisui huffed a sigh and smiled weakly at Sakura. "Sensei, your hair turned white! How long were we gone? How old are you now? Like, fifty?"

Sakura managed a tiny grin as Shisui rolled his eye theatrically. "I'm still nineteen, Naruto-kun," he said patiently. "I had an incident with the hair bleach, that's all."

Sakura's eyes darted past Shisui and she stiffened. "It's all right. You're safe, Sakura-chan, she's a friend," he soothed, squeezing her shoulder before letting go. He turned around. "Hi, Shizune-sensei," he greeted tiredly.

Shizune smiled at him warmly. "Good to see you, Shisui," she said. A wrinkled smock had been tied hastily over her flak jacket, and a large, worn medical pack hung at her waist.

"Kids," said Shisui. "This is Shizune-sensei. She's Tsunade-sama's right hand woman, an accomplished jounin, and one of the best iryo-nin in the world. I trust her with my life."

"Hello," said Shizune, smiling. "It's nice to meet you. Is it alright if I check you all out?"

Naruto and Sakura, now crammed together on Sakura's narrow cot, exchanged blatantly suspicious glances. Shisui grimaced and shot a meaningful look at Sai, still hovering in the doorway.

Sai was a dutiful student, a good soldier, and a better friend. "I experienced some chakra exhaustion last night," he said. "I would appreciate a medical evaluation."

"Sure," said Shizune instantly. She turned away from the huddled Team Byakko members and patted the next cot. "Hop on up here and I'll take a look. Actually -" she glanced back at Shisui. "Why don't we see what your Shisui-sensei remembers?"

"Aw, Shizune-sensei," Shisui complained good-naturedly.

Shizune managed to look unimpressed without moving a single muscle. Shisui obediently dredged up his chakra and stepped to her side. He let his chakra sink into Sai's, let his pathways circulate the chakra. "Chakra levels still low," he noted aloud. Shisui moved his hands down to Sai's elbow, where the natural flow of chakra met some resistance. He narrowed his eye thoughtfully. "Inflammation here," he said. "Strained tendon."

"I did jar my arm yesterday," Sai admitted. "I did not think much of it."

Shisui let the chakra in his hands flicker out. "Other than that, just scrapes and bruises. Is there anything else that feels uncomfortable, Sai-kun?"

"No, Sensei," he answered after a considering pause. "I'm a little tired, but that's it."

"Here, let me," said Shizune, and chakra glowed in her hands, far more stable than Shisui's. Shisui watched with no small amount of envy, because endless months of intensive chakra control training had only gotten him so far. "Your iron levels are a little low," she commented with a frown. "That might contribute to the tiredness. Any dizziness, lightheadedness, headache?"

"No," Sai answered, watching Shizune curiously as she pressed a green-glowing hand to his head.

"Good," Shizune said absently, moving her hand down to his elbow. "I'll go ahead and fix this up," she added, and Sai's forehead smoothed out as her chakra sank in. "Make sure you eat some meat - red meat, not fish. And get some rest. I'm grounding you," she added as an aside to Shisui.

"Hey," Shisui protested weakly.

"I mean it," Shizune scolded severely. "Five days of pursuit followed by a high-level raid, and then you decided to burn the rest of your chakra running diagnostics and iryou-jutsu? You're lucky you're still standing. Mandatory leave for a week."

War was war. Shisui couldn't afford to be sidelined for a week, not when bases were raided and destroyed in under a day. He sighed. "Shizune-sensei, you know I can't do that."

She glared at him, the chakra fading abruptly from her hands. She was a doctor and a soldier both; at Tsunade's side, she knew better than most what the war effort could and could not afford. "Three days," she threatened. "Don't make me put you in a coma for them."

"Hai," he agreed wryly.

She turned - slowly - towards Naruto and Sakura, both uncharacteristically silent as they watched her. Sakura tensed slightly but visibly forced herself to relax.

"Is it all right I take a look at you?" She asked gently.

Sakura shot a desperate look at Naruto.

"Why can't Shisui-sensei do it?" Naruto demanded, leaning forward slightly as if to shield Sakura.

"I'm no medic-nin," said Shisui. "Everything I learned, I learned from Shizune-sensei - she's the one who patched me up after I -" the words got tortured stuck in his throat when his eye landed on Sakura's too-pale face. " - ended up with some pretty nasty injuries," he said instead. "Sakura-chan has a concussion and a couple fractured bones - I can't fix those, but Shizune-sensei can."

Naruto scowled fiercely. Sakura looked unconvinced.

"It's safe," Sai volunteered. "She did not hurt me."

Shisui was a little wounded when Naruto glanced at Sakura, who bit her lip and nodded grudgingly, but he wouldn't pretend to match the strength of the bond between those six children who had fled the bloodbath of the Fall. That particular hell was theirs to share and weather themselves.

"Thank you," said Shizune, who had waited patiently through their negotiations as if she had all the time in the world. She approached carefully, running chakra-green hands over Sakura. It sank into her head and Sakura blinked, the fog in her eyes clearing as Shizune moved on to her shoulder. "You did a good job with the bruising," she remarked over her shoulder to Shisui. Her hand trailed downwards and Sakura's breath caught in her throat.

Shizune looked up sharply, and met Shisui's eye with a grim stare.

* * *

 _"Already, child? How disappointing. I thought I would have to work harder to make you beg."_

* * *

On the first morning of Shisui's enforced medical leave, he snapped from dead sleep to fully awake in the span of a second to silence and the overwhelming surety that something was wrong. His Sharingan blazed to life instinctively as he sat up and opened his eye in the same movement, sweeping the room for threats.

His eye caught nothing out of the ordinary except Sakura, sitting bolt upright with tear tracks streaking her cheeks and her face frozen in a rictus of terror as her jaw clenched around a silent scream. He was at her side in a flash. "Sakura-chan," he said urgently, and leaned carefully into her field of vision.

Her eyes, locked on something far beyond Shisui, beyond the tent, beyond the present, slowly focused on his, and he belatedly realized his Sharingan was still active. But Sakura let out a shuddering sigh and blinked, wrapping her arms around herself. "Shisui-sensei," she whispered.

Wryly, Shisui noted that he'd never seen anyone - including another Uchiha - react to an activated Sharingan with relief. "Yeah, Sakura-chan," he said, drawing up the blanket so it wrapped around her shoulders once again. On the next cot over, Naruto snorted in his sleep and rolled over. "You want to talk about it?" he offered quietly.

Sakura hunched in on herself further and shook her head mutely.

"Okay," said Shisui, ignoring the ache and rage that rose up in his heart in concert. "I'll be right here." He paused, humming under his breath. "Want me to tell you a story?" he suggested. "I can tell you how I met my crows."

Sakura's eyes drifted to his. "Crows?" She rasped at last.

"Ah," Shisui realized. "You haven't met my summons yet."

Sakura's eyes widened. "Sensei, you have summons?" She asked enviously, a spark clearing some of the dullness in her gaze.

"Sure do," said Shisui. "When I was a new chuunun, I was in northwestern Hi on a mission - an easy C-rank retrieval mission. There's a little grove where they say the wall between our world and the summons' is thin and it's easy to slip between worlds. It's considered a myth, because it's on no map and any who go searching never find it. Only those with no intention of finding it stumble upon it at all.

"As I travelled back to Konoha after a mission, I took a shortcut through a narrow gorge. One moment I was running through the big, broad-leafed trees of the Shodaime Hokage's forests, and the next I was falling past needle-leafed pines on a great mountain ridge covered by them. I looked to my right and saw a misty valley yawning out before me. I looked to my left and saw the treetops ablaze, with thick black smoke curling into a sky growing hazy.

"Above the burning trees circled a great black swarm, letting out a great racket as it dove towards the fire and away again and in again. When I looked closer, I saw that they were birds bearing feathers the color of coal. One broke from the swarm as I watched, winging down to where I stood at the juncture between mountain and valley. She cawed, and though she did not speak the ningen tongue, I understood: a great many nests had nestled in the trees now afire, and the crows could not rescue their unhatched offspring.

"I ran. I ran through the flames and they flickered and dimmed as I passed, and I rescued every single egg in every single nest and brought them to where the first crow waited. This was a test I did not realize until the second began - the crows sought one who demonstrated courage by walking through fire."

Shisui paused to take a breath. Sakura's shoulders hunched still, but her eyes were wide and wondering.

"I stood, and the crows flocked to perch around me in a circle. I moved to leave, and they dove at me with dagger-sharp beaks and claws and turned me back. I ran as fast as I could, but the crows flew faster. I used a shunshin, but the crows used their own jutsu and blocked me again. Finally, I used a genjutsu, bunshin, and burrowing jutsu all at once to trick the crows into believing I remained in the circle. The first crow laughed at that, and the rest followed when they discovered I had escaped." Shisui's mouth quirked in a reluctant grin. "The crows like tricks - cleverness is the second of the three traits they look for in a summoner.

"What's the third thing the crows were looking for, Sensei?" Sakura asked, peering up at him curiously.

"Ah, that's for the crows to tell who they choose," Shisui evaded, crinkling his eye at her to soften the deflection. Greed, he didn't say, tamping down the sour twist in his stomach at the unwelcome reminder; he had long since come to terms with that. "They gave me their scroll to sign, and so I did."

"I'd like to meet them, Sensei," said Sakura wistfully.

"You will," Shisui promised. "They haven't been out much the past few years, so I'm sure they're eager to stick around."

Sakura frowned, a furrow dimpling the space between her eyebrows. "I thought summon scrolls were rare and passed down through clans," she said slowly. "But - not yours?"

"That's usually the case," Shisui agreed. "Summons usually entrust their summoner to pass on the contract to a worthy successor, who's more often than not a direct descendant or clan member. However, the animal spirits can choose to create a new contract or take their scroll away from a summoner they deem unworthy. In those cases, they'd actively search out a new, compatible summoner in order to keep ties to the mortal world."

"Oh," said Sakura thoughtfully, but Shisui could hear disappointment in her voice. She hid her insecurities better than Hinata did, but Sakura was still just a girl - barely ten, now - and Shisui knew that telling her that not all shinobi benefited from a summons contract would be a cold comfort. But Sakura's silence turned introspective. Shisui watched her warily, all too familiar with the ways introspection could turn into self-loathing.

His patience paid off. Sakura twisted her hands in her lap. "Sensei," she said at last. She paused again before continuing. "In the - when we - " She licked her lips. "Sasuke-kun was hurt and I - I didn't know what to do. I couldn't - he just - "

"It's not your fault," Shisui soothed, reaching over to fold her hands in his. "There was nothing you could do."

"There could have been," Sakura snapped, clenching her hands so tight her fingernails ripped through her sheets. "If I had learned how to heal."

Shisui's pause lasted only milliseconds. "No - Sakura-chan, they sealed your chakra. Iryou-jutsu wouldn't have helped."

"Not all healing needs chakra," Sakura retorted fiercely. "He was losing so much blood, and I didn't even know how to bandage him!" Tears dripped from her eyes, unceasing now that they'd started, and the hopelessness in them tore at Shisui's heart. She dashed them away angrily, scowling as if that would make them stop.

"Sasuke-kun is fine now," Shisui said, reaching up to wipe away her tears gently. "We got him back, and Shizune-sensei fixed him up. I can show you how to tie a good bandage, if it'll make you feel better."

"No," said Sakura, and suddenly her eyes were steely through the sheen of tears. "Teach me all of it."

"All of it?" Shisui said, surprised. "Sakura-chan, I don't know much iryou-jutsu at all; I'm hardly qualified to teach."

"I don't care," she said resolutely. "I want to learn everything you know. You said I'd be good at it."

Shisui ruffled her hair affectionately. "You will be," he promised. "You'll be the best."

Sakura smiled, watery and small but true, and this time, the silence they shared was comfortable. "Tell me about your crows," she said at last.

Shisui shifted to sit up on the cot next to her. "My flock's leader is called Mirin," he said, recalling the crow fondly, "and though she is not the strongest or the fastest, she is the cleverest of them all."

Neji reappeared when the sun's rays streamed faintly through the canvas wall of the tent, balancing a stack of five food trays with ease. Shisui had run out of stories to tell, but sat crosslegged on Sakura's cot as he reviewed a small stack of reports he had neglected when he'd left 25-35W in a hurry what felt like lifetimes ago. She watched him with half-lidded eyes, drowsy, but still too afraid of what she would see when she closed her eyes to comfortably sleep - Shisui remembered the feeling with unfortunate vividness.

Sai sat up abruptly at Neji's entrance, one hand flying to the tanto at his side as he jolted from his sleep. He let the blade drop when he realized who it was, and did not say anything despite Neji's condescending glance.

"Good morning, Neji-kun," Shisui greeted, "and Sai-kun." He stuffled his stack of reports, lining up the edges neatly. "Is that lunch?"

"It is," answered Neji, perfectly proper and without any of the derision he might have used had Naruto or maybe even Temari asked a question with such an obvious answer.

"Thank you, Neji-kun," Shisui said sincerely, sliding off Sakura's cot. "Naruto-kun isn't awake -"

"Food," Naruto moaned on cue, rolling over with one arm flopping over the side of the cot. Drool smeared one cheek and his eyes, while open, were glazed open.

"Not fully awake," Shisui amended. "You can set those down," he added, and jerked his head towards the low table tucked off to the side of the room.

Lunch was a quiet affair, as Naruto scarfed down rice too quickly to be healthy, and the others weren't talkative to begin with. Shisui watched Sai moreso than the others; he knew where the other three stood, but Sai played his cards close to the chest - so close, in fact, that Shisui suspected he himself did not always know what they held.

Among the more obvious matters the pack presented - including Neji's Clan-related passive-aggression, Gaara's tenuous control over the Ichibi, what Zabuza called Naruto's "dumb as bricks syndrome" - Sai tended to slip between the cracks. He rarely if ever requested anything from the sensei - only, early on, another tanto so he and Neji could both carry one.

In terms of raw strength, he was overshadowed by Gaara and Naruto, in skill by Temari, and in that vague quality called 'genius' by Haku and Neji. Compared to Hinata or Sakura, he required very little hands-on training, as he learned intuitively and developed his own ink-jutsu. He was ever serious and mission-focused.

Sai was, in short, the model genin.

Unfortunately, Shisui knew all too well what turmoil an unassuming mask could conceal. A child was a fragile thing, the mind even more delicate.

So, as Sai worked his way methodically through his lunch tray, Shisui watched him out of the corner of his eye.

"Sai-kun," Shisui said, stacking his radish neatly on top of his rice. "You must be getting bored, pent up in this room for so long."

"No, Sensei," Sai answered placidly. "I have the opportunity to further study my art. I am satisfied to do so and act as a guard for the members of the team who are vulnerable."

Naruto instantly bristled, and Shisui bit down on a grimace as the not-currently-blond-but-still-very-much-blond objected, "I'm not vulgarable!"

"No, you are not 'vulgarable,'" Shisui said soothingly, as Sakura simultaneously hunched and glowered. "But your responsibility right now is to recover your strength. Besides, everyone needs a break. I'm taking a break," he pointed out.

This seemed to be an irrationally compelling argument to make, because not a single one of the four pack children disputed him. Shisui took the win for what it was.

Hatake-taichou ghosted into arrivals room three not long after Shisui tipped the last of his soup into his mouth. The captain wore his battle armor still, pristine save a few scuffs and scorch marks. He knocked the mask off his head as he entered, and though Naruto jumped at his sudden appearance, not one of the children made so much as a squeak.

He looked, to Shisui's discerning eye, terrible. Dark shadows ringed his visible eye, stark against his bloodless face, and the hint of a bruise bloomed along his jaw. Still, he held himself rigidly and moved with purpose, and Shisui knew that he would not stop until he had completed whatever task or mission he had assigned himself. "Taichou," Shisui greeted, standing cautiously.

Hatake nodded at him in acknowledgement before turning a keen stare on Sakura. She stared back fearlessly, something like relief slumping her shoulders. "Let's get that seal off you," he said.

"Is it going to hurt her?" Naruto asked tremulously.

"No," said Hatake, stripping off his half-gloves purposefully. "It'll feel like waking up energized." From his pockets, he produced an ink stick, dish, and brush, and from his pouch a small stack of sealing paper. Both Sai and Neji straightened, and Neji activated his Byakugan for a better look.

Hatake noticed their interest, because he narrated, "The seal you have, Sakura, is called the Six-Point Suppression Wheel. Its stability is due to its two-three nature, which gives it balance between its suppression and siphoning components. The element of water is invoked as part of a barrier to outside chakra because it softens and absorbs any intrusion." His brush danced across the paper, leaving behind a trail of kanji, strange characters, and seemingly meaningless squiggles in its wake.

"To break an even-numbered seal, we need an odd-numbered one," Hatake continued. "Three is the lowest number a seal can have and still be stable with, like legs on a table. The lower the number, the less complex - and the less chakra it needs or can contain. However," he added, touching a finger to the center of the seal and feeding in his chakra, "because three is a component of six, any countering effects will automatically be magnified." He held the seal up delicately between two fingers. "This should do it."

Sakura watched with wary eyes as Hatake leaned forward, setting the seal on her forehead. His chakra pulsed; the seal glowed. Sakura let out a sigh of surprise and relief as her chakra flared.

"Good?" asked Hatake, plucking the used paper back off her head.

Sakura nodded, flexing her fingers against her blanket and pushing out in the chakra equivalent of a stretch. "Thank you," she murmured.

"Good," said Hatake, and only Shisui's highly trained eye could pick out the discomfort on what little remained visible of his face. "I have seven more of these to do. Juu." He nodded his farewell at Shisui, sort of jerked his chin at the children, and tugged the mask back down over his face. He swept the sealing supplies back up and slipped out of the room so hurriedly the room may as well have been on fire.

A pause. "That was pretty cool," Naruto said with some distracted awe, eyeing Sakura's unblemished forehead.

"Sensei," said Neji contemplatively. "What would you say if I told you I would like to learn the art of sealing?"

"I would tell you that it is an extremely complex and highly abstract subject that requires both natural intuition and a lot of hard work," Shisui said cheerfully. "I hope you like mathematical theory."

On the second morning of his enforced leave, Shisui tucked away his mask and broke out his stash of heavy-duty shinobi-grade makeup and set about camouflaging himself into an entirely different one-eyed shinobi. Hatake had finally succumbed to Shizune's doggedness and had spent the first seven hours of his own sixteen hour enforced medical leave unconscious on Shisui's cot, but Shisui was quite confident that the captain would awaken instantly in the event of an attack or even the entrance of an unsuspecting nurse. He also had the unintentional side effect of functioning as a sort of dreamcatcher, as Sakura had relaxed the instant she saw him and slept the entire night without incident. Shisui found this both bizarre and hilarious but elected not to question it.

Sai forwent his meticulous ink rendition of the captain's hound Urushi to watch Shisui brush a powder the color of oak across the bridge of his nose.

"The structure of your face appears entirely altered, but I don't sense a genjutsu," he said thoughtfully. "Though you have several beyond my ability to detect."

Shisui plastered on an old mask, the one with an easy grin and easier laugh. "It's not a genjutsu, Sai-kun," he said cheerfully. "Just playing with your perception. No chakra involved."

"Interesting," was Sai's response.

"Pass me the highlighter," said Shisui.

Once Shisui had blinked away the sting of his blue eye lens, he left Sakura, Naruto, and a dozing Neji in Hatake's and Sai's capable hands, but mostly Sai's because the captain too was still unconscious, and slipped out of the hospital tent to, as Zabuza put it, 'mingle with the masses.' Zabuza had a strangely ironic sense of humor and strong feelings about caste-based elitism.

Shiroisuna was one of the biggest Hana-ha bases on the front lines, evidenced by both the presence of an actual hospital tent and a large, relatively permanent command tent. Shisui wandered purposefully away from both.

Konoha shinobi didn't see trees as obstacles. Where civilians or even shinobi from other villages might cut down trees for clearing in which to pitch tents, the Hana-ha worked around them. Shisui meandered through the maze of canvas and rope to a behemoth of a tent wrapped around an entire grove of trees.

He slipped inside the massive mess hall and promptly tripped over the kunoichi at the end of the line that formed almost immediately inside the entrance and snaked around the side of the tent.

"Hi, sorry," said Shisui with an embarrassed laugh. "Wrecked my knee in a battle a couple days ago. Still don't have my balance back."

"Oh yeah?" said the kunoichi, giving him an interested once-over. "Which battle was that? Yasashii Kemuri?"

"Nah, I was down south for the raid on Antler Peak. Sumi Tedasuke," Shisui lied effortlessly, plucking the name from one of the reports he'd read the day before. "Landed here because my knee needed some real work, so my team dropped me off before heading up north. I'm Kenoshi, by the way. You been here long…?"

"Yashahiko," said the kunoichi, brushing a strand of acorn-brown hair from her eyes. "Been here eight months tomorrow."

Shisui tucked his hands in his pockets and leaned in almost imperceptibly. "Yashahiko," he repeated, letting the name roll off his tongue. "It's a pleasure." He smiled at her, and she mirrored him, a pleased light in her eye betraying her carefully loose stance. "Say, Yashahiko," Shisui said conversationally. "You hear anything interesting recently?"

Shinobi loved gossip, and shinobi loved stories. Yashahiko lit up, her spine straightening just a little bit. "Yeah, did you hear that Raijuu sank a Kiri warship?" she said immediately, then paused. "I mean, you have, obviously -"

"No, go ahead," Shisui encouraged. "I've been in the hospital tent for days and they wouldn't let us talk about what happened because the survivors are in there. I've only heard bits and pieces."

"Well, you're probably the only one who hasn't heard at this point," Yashahiko teased. "I've heard it enough to recite it in my sleep at this point. Nobody wants to shut up about it. Myself included," she added and Shisui laughed.

Yashahiko paused to pick up a tray from the stack. "It's incredible," she said, holding out her tray for a tuber mix to be slopped into one of the sections. "I mean, we all assumed those things were pretty indestructible."

"That must have been some firepower," Shisui mused aloud, holding his out for a rice mash.

Yashahiko had reached the end of the line. Shinobi sat on the ground in neat, orderly lines from wall to wall, with the only open spaces the makeshift aisles. She glanced back at Shisui with a grimace. "Can you tree-walk with a bum knee, Kenoshi?"

Shisui sighed. "If you hold my tray I can probably spider crawl up," he said glumly. Yashahiko snorted and held out her free hand, and Kenoshi passed his tray over.

Spider crawling up a tree was more embarrassing than difficult in a room full of shinobi who had learned to walk up trees as children, but it amused Shisui to do so and had the fortunate side effect of maintaining his cover. Shisui made it thirty feet in the air before reaching a branch wide enough for two to sit crosswise yet unoccupied. He sidled along to the narrower end of the branch, and Yashahiko sat down next to him with a sigh, handing back over his tray with a sympathetic glance.

"That's rough, man," she said, sticking her spoon in her mouth. "'ow long y'off ac'ive du'y?"

Shisui quirked a smile. "Actually, I'm already on light duty since they're shorthanded in the hospital tent. But no combat assignment for another week, at least."

Yashahiko raised an eyebrow. "Oh, shit. Medic-nin?"

"Yeah," said Shisui with a bashful smile. "I - "

"Oh, hang on," interrupted Yashahiko, waving frantically down below. "This is my team. Mayanosuke, Kuchinashi, Taito! This is Kenoshi, he's a medic-nin."

"Ooh, fancy!" said the kunoichi with a high ponytail, plopping down directly in front of Shisui. "Medic-nin, huh? How come you couldn't fix yourself up? Saw you crawling up this thing like a lame monkey."

"I'm not that good," Shisui said honestly, holding up his hands. "Bruising, nicked artery, I'll patch you up fine, but bones and joints? Anything finicky like cartilage? I got nothing."

"Damn," muttered the shinobi who sat down next to her. "Guess you can't fix my ear." The top of his ear had been bisected by a healed-over scar.

Yashahiko rolled her eyes. "Taito, your ear is fine, it's just a scratch," she complained. "Leave 'im alone."

"Chicks dig the scars," said the other shinobi seriously.

The ponytail kunoichi socked him in the shoulder. "Shut up, Mayanosuke," she said, more affectionate than annoyed. "You're a genjutsu specialist. You have zero scars."

Taito waggled a spoon at Shisui's knee. "What action did you see?" he asked around a mouthful of rice.

"Raid on Sumi Tedasuke," Shisui said. "Twisted my knee about six minutes in and got sidelined from field medic to very-back-of-the-field medic, so not very much action."

"Ooh, rough," said Taito. "We were on Gull Hill last week. Lucky to get away - it was a complete rout."

"Oh, shit," Shisui said, with feeling, as Yashahiko grimaced. "You were on Gull Hill? I heard about that."

"Yeah, news travels fast," Mayanosuke muttered. "Fucking massacre. And for what? Nothing but bullshit."

Shisui leaned back at his vitriol, as Kuchinashi shot a sharp glance at her teammate. "What do you mean?" Shisui asked curiously.

"We're Konoha shinobi," Mayanosuke muttered, stabbing aggressively at his vegetable mash. "The hell're we fighting Kiri's war for?"

"Yano," Yashahiko snapped.

"No, it's okay," Shisui said earnestly. "War sucks, man."

That startled a snort out of Taito and the tension out of Yashahiko's shoulders. Kuchinashi raised a speared chunk of what was probably wild hog. "Cheers to that."

"But we can't take back Konoha alone," Shisui added. "There's not enough of us. Danzou would crush us like a bunch of ants."

"We're getting crushed out here," Mayanosuke pointed out. "Hundreds of us'll never see even the walls of Konoha ever again. It's good people dying pointlessly in someone else's war."

Taito sighed with a tiredness Shisui felt down to his bones. "It's so the rest of us can live in Konoha's walls again."

The muted rumble of the hundreds of conversations below filled the silence as each turned their focus to their food. Shisui eyed them under his lashes and chewed on the end of his spoon. "I shouldn't know this," he said after a moment, "but Raijuu was in the hospital tent for treatment and he met with a couple of his captains. Command's getting ready to move on Kirigakure. This is the end."

Yashahiko choked on her rice mash.

"What?" Taito said blankly. "Are you serious?"

Shisui let a slow smile creep across his face. "Straight from the horse's mouth."

"The end," Kuchinashi beamed, reaching out blindly to smack Taito's shoulder excitedly, which he tolerated with a long-suffering patience.

"So we're winning, then," Mayanosuke said contemplatively. "We've been sent back and forth again and again."

"Don't hear a thing about who's where, unless it's from other grunts," Yashahiko agreed gruffly.

Shisui shrugged. "We did just sink a warship."

"Raijuu sank a warship," Taito corrected. Kuchinashi socked him in the shoulder. "Ow."

"Taito-kun here has a crush on Raijuu," Kuchinashi confided, and this time Taito slapped at her desperately.

"I told you that in confidence!" Taito yelped as Yashahiko snickered.

"You don't even know what he looks like," Kuchinashi said derisively. "You saw him what, once, halfway across a battlefield? Do you even know what color his hair is?"

"Pale brown," Taito shot back. "Probably. Some sort of light color. He's an Anbu captain. And he's tall, and graceful, and so strong. So commanding." His expression had drifted into dreamy, and Shisui's face twitched between uncontrolled laughter and a rictus of horror.

"Oh my gods," Yashahiko groaned, slapping a hand over her face. "Can you stop embarrassing us in front of this nice medic-nin?"

Taito turned considering eyes on Shisui in a very slow, very obvious once-over. "Mm. He is pretty nice," he purred, and Kuchinashi smacked him so hard he'd have fallen right off the branch if he hadn't anchored himself with chakra.

"Idiot," Mayanosuke sighed as Yashahiko muffled a frustrated scream in her hands.

"We're very sorry about him," Kuchinashi said as she slapped a hand over her teammate's mouth. "He wasn't socialized properly as a child."

"Sorry to say I'm taken," Shisui said dryly. "You've better luck with Raijuu."

"Don't encourage him," Yashahiko muttered as Taito let out a disappointed sigh. "He'll propose in the middle of battle and get himself killed."

"It's like herding a cat," Mayanosuke said bleakly.

Shisui let out a commiserating sigh. "I know what that's like," he said, completely heartfelt.

Five hours later and as many new teams of shinobi met, Shisui's metaphorical cats were all awake and all huddled on one cot, watching the captain with wide, focused eyes as Hatake levered himself up from yet another one-fingered pushup. All four sets of pack eyes flickered to Shisui before returning their attention to the captain.

Shisui didn't bother glaring. "Taichou," he said loudly. "I really don't think this is what Shizune-sensei had in mind when she put you on medical leave."

"Shizune said not to 'engage in any Command-related activities, including tactical planning, reviewing of reports, or combat.' She didn't say I shouldn't train," Hatake said levelly, and sat up on his heels. "How did it go?"

Shisui suppressed a sigh. "Morale is about as high as can be expected," he said, scrubbing a hand over his hair and taking off the skullcap bandana with it. "We knew nobody was going to be happy about fighting this war. It's hard for the rest of the shinobi to keep sight of purpose when they don't know much of what's going on."

"We're a shadow army fighting a secret war," Hatake said, dusting his hands off. "We have too many enemies to share information freely, other than generalities, and sometimes not even then. Good work," he added, just as Shisui opened his mouth to respond. "Take a break."

Shisui hesitated only half a second. "Hai," he said, and went to find his pack and his armor.

The pack had multiplied while Shisui fixed his face and recovered his armor. He wandered back into arrivals room three, and Temari waved from the middle cot. Gaara's head was pillowed in her lap, his body draped over Hinata's. Haku sat crosslegged on Hinata's other side.

"Hello, small Yorozoku children," Shisui said bemusedly, and glanced at a scowling Zabuza, slouched against the far cot.

"We were ejected from room six," Haku explained. "Zabuza-san did not wish to find barracks space for us."

"The tree-huggers will contaminate you," Zabuza growled. "You don't need those useless emotions clouding your judgement."

"Hai, Zabuza-san," Haku said obediently.

"Right," Shisui said. Hatake, sitting crosslegged next to the table, ignored them all with the ease of long practice. Given the lack of space in the increasingly crowded room, Shisui meandered over to sit next to Zabuza, who eyed him critically over the katana he oiled with practiced strokes. "How's Sasuke-kun?"

"He is recovering," Neji answered by rote, and Shisui surmised with apologetic amusement that it was neither the first nor the second time he had been asked the same question that day. "Itachi-sensei has just provided for him a fifth blood transfusion. His esophagus and intestines seem in proper functioning order and his stomach muscle is now completely intact. The return of his chakra has increased the speed of his recovery. The medic-nin believes he can be moved out of intensive care today."

"Oh, good," said Shisui. "Is he up for visitors?"

"The medic-nin said no visitors and excitement," Naruto said with a prodigious scowl. "We sneaked in and she kicked us out." Next to him, Sakura pulled her knees closer to her chest and looked mutinous.

"We also attempted to visit," Sai volunteered. "Unfortunately, Shizune-sensei called my bluff and confiscated my bandana." Shisui noticed that he was indeed missing his white medical marker. Gaara looked faintly murderous, but that was par for the course so Shisui wasn't too worried about him trying to off the medic-nin.

"Ah," said Shisui, and tried to wink at Sakura but maybe blinked instead. "I'll be quick."

Zabuza barked a laugh, because he was ever one to enjoy flaunting of the rules, even if he himself wasn't the one doing the actual breaking. Hatake raised his eye to the tent ceiling as Shisui whisked out of the room, but he was technically off duty and couldn't be bothered to stop him.

Sasuke's room was empty save he himself, lying prone on the center cot with drips snaking into his arm, and Itachi, cat-mask perched atop his head as he sat crosslegged on a second cot at the far end of the room. He opened his eyes when Shisui entered, recognition rendering his chakra placid.

"Hello, cousin," said Shisui, sliding his hands into his pocket. "I take it you don't count as a visitor?"

"Shizune-sensei knows better than to attempt to separate me from him, especially after this," Itachi responded, his eyes drifting over to Sasuke's gently rising and falling chest. "However, she has discouraged further guests." He shot Shisui a pointed but apologetic glance.

"Ah, she loves me," Shisui dismissed, sliding further into the room. "She won't kick me out."

"She asked the captain to leave," Itachi countered, returning his attention to his brother.

Hmm. She must really have been serious. Shisui shrugged. "She can't ask me to leave if she doesn't know I'm here. Let's call it our little secret." He flashed a quicksilver smile at Itachi, who ignored him tolerantly.

Shisui stepped closer to Sasuke's bedside to peer at him a little more carefully. "He does look better," he noted, eyeing Sasuke's face critically. His skin was still pale, almost paper-white, but his pulse thudded regular in his throat. Shizune-sensei and the rest of the medic-nin hadn't taken off the respirator covering the bottom of his face, only hooked it up to an actual oxygen tank.

He turned away and padded towards Itachi, who shifted obligingly to give him room to sit down. "Aa," Itachi agreed. "He is greatly recovered."

"He's fine, he's back," Shisui said lightly, bumping his shoulder into Itachi's. "Why so tense?"

"You know why," Itachi said quietly.

Shisui sighed. "Oh, Itachi-kun," he said.

"It cannot be helped," his cousin said tiredly, and his voice was as close to defeat as Shisui had ever heard.

Shisui glanced over at him, alarmed. "Hey," he said but Itachi shook his head, just a minute movement.

"I apologize," he said, and his eyes shuttered of all emotion, wiping his face blank once again. "I am merely...tired. I did not want Sasuke to live the same life we did."

Shisui hummed, letting himself slump against the tent wall. "I'd rather no one grow up living a war," he said. "It wouldn't be so bad, don't you think, if we could all live like wolves in the forest?"

"No great trial," Itachi agreed. He glanced down at his hands, folded neatly in his lap. "Selfish, perhaps - to leave unprotected those who cannot hope to stand against they who would do them harm."

"Too noble by far, cousin," Shisui said with a wry laugh. "You shame the rest of us." A too-solemn silence fell between the two of them. Shisui watched Itachi out of the corner of his eye, noting the dark circles, the singed tips of his hair, the too-stiff way he held himself. "Sleep," he said, slinging an arm around his cousin's slim shoulders.

Itachi frowned immediately, eyes flickering predictably to Sasuke's form though he didn't shrug off Shisui's arm. Shisui could feel the tension in his form, the slight quiver of his muscles from days of sleep deprivation. "Sasuke - " he began.

"Sleep," Shisui insisted, tugging on Itachi's ponytail gently. "I'll keep watch. You can't stay awake forever." He reached over, pulling on Itachi until he slumped against Shisui's side. "I'll keep him safe, I promise. Trust me."

Itachi surrendered to Shisui's insistent tugging and slid down until his head was pillowed in Shisui's lap. For a moment, he stared up at Shisui with dark eyes. "I do," he said, and let his eyelids drift closed. "Don't let anything happen to him," he said, and then fell quiet.

In the silence, Shisui brushed the stray strands out of Itachi's face, watched as the furrowed brow gradually smoothed into slack unconsciousness with each rhythmic breath. He looked much younger without the constant shadow of tension. Shisui rubbed ghost-light fingers in the space between Itachi's eyebrows.

Itachi didn't wake at the touch. Sasuke didn't so much as stir. Shisui let a trickle of chakra into his eyes, just enough to activate his doujutsu, to make out the glow of iryou chakra enshrouding his youngest cousin. He recognized Shizune's work - her best skill was encouraging the body to fix itself, and healing comas were her forte.

And that, perhaps, was the greatest demonstration of why Shisui would never be a true medic-nin. He could knit and sew flesh back together, but that's where his abilities - and his knowledge - reached their limit. Learning iryou-jutsu out of boredom was quite atypical.

But that was fine. Shisui had always been a shinobi first. A protector.

That being said, stillness did not comfort Shisui. Stillness was unnatural in living things. Shisui was patient, yes, and resilient, but restless nonetheless. His eye skittered from Sasuke's dark spikes to Itachi slumped against him to the gap between canvas panels at the entrance to the room and resisted the urge to drum his fingers on the nearest hard surface. As that would in fact be Itachi's head, he refrained and settled for staring mournfully at Itachi's eyelashes.

If Shisui had known he'd be spending hours motionless in a hospital room, he'd have brought over of the backed up reports that captaincy had unfortunately bestowed on him. His predecessor had retired back to resistance efforts on the mainland after being nearly bisected by one of the Swordsman and subsequently losing a chunk of liver, a large portion of his intestine, and a good amount of his digestive function. Being a captain was a thankless job.

As it was, Shisui's paperwork was inaccessible, and he knew the dangers of getting caught up in his own head. As a totally mature, well-adjusted shinobi with a little chakra to burn, Shisui snaked out his chakra through the panels of the tent to the next room over and snared Zabuza in a friendly genjutsu.

Zabuza flinched at his sudden appearance next to him on the cot where Shisui'd sat maybe half an hour earlier but didn't bring his sword up, which was a good thing because there were eight jumpy pack children and one Hatake Kakashi in the room with him. "What the hell, Konoha," he growled.

"I'm bored," said Shisui cheerfully. "Read me my mission reports or something."

The Swordsman scoffed. "What kind of bullcrap -? Why the hell would I do that, that sounds boring as shit."

"I'm so behind," Shisui complained. "C'mon, Z. I need to get through them and the captain put me undercover for like the entire day even though I'm supposed to be on medical leave."

"So snitch on him and get yourself an extra day," Zabuza said, unconcerned. "I have my own fucking reports to go through."

Shisui's illusionary self mirrored his own glare. "In what universe is snitching on the captain a good idea?"

Zabuza shrugged, but also didn't make any move to pull out any paperwork, either his or Shisui's. "Come on, Konoha," he drawled. "Don't you want to see Hatake and the angry yuki-onna fight?"

Shisui raised an eyebrow. "You're the one Shizune-sensei'll be fighting if she hears you calling her that."

"She's heard me call her worse."

Shisui rolled his eye. "She can melt your lungs by breathing on you," he pointed out.

Zabuza smiled a lazy shark's grin. "I'd let her."

"Good grief," Shisui muttered, looking for the nearest hard surface to bash his head against. Sadly, since his real self was still serving as Itachi's pillow, his options were sadly limited. "Look, you gonna read me my reports or not?"

Zabuza snarled wordlessly. "Fine," he snapped, "but only because mine have the same shit in them." He slouched over to Shisui's pack. With a little extra chakra, Shisui pulled on the easiest sense to co-opt.

"What're you doing?" Shisui heard through Zabuza's ears.

"Konoha wants me to read him a fucking bedtime story," Zabuza responded, and Shisui could hear the smirk in his voice.

"Really?" Shisui muttered, rolling his eye yet again.

"Oh. Fine," said Hatake dismissively, far too used to their shenanigans to question further.

Itachi shifted slightly in his lap, and Shisui dropped the chakra lending him Zabuza's hearing before the chakra surge could wake his cousin.

"All right," Zabuza grumbled, slumping back on his cot. He shuffled through the stack of papers in his hand. "Report from 34-W-29-fucking-E. Jounin-in-charge Hana-Shi-117."

Itachi's return to the waking world was entirely seamless. His eyes opened without a single hitch in his breathing about seven reports in. He blinked up at Shisui, the fog clearing almost immediately from his eyes.

"Hi," said Shisui. "Hold that thought," he said to Zabuza.

"Thank the gods," Zabuza muttered. "Fuck off and let me sleep."

"Thanks, Z," said Shisui. "You're the best." He dropped the genjutsu at Itachi's curious stare.

"Sharingan. A genjutsu," Itachi noted curiously, giving the rest of the room a cautious glance.

"Aa. I was just chatting with Zabuza," Shisui said. Itachi blinked once and sat up, turning, predictably, to Sasuke's bedside. "He's fine," Shisui reassured. "I've been sitting here the entire time."

Still, Itachi rose to his feet, stepping over to Sasuke's bedside. Shisui followed, peering down at Sasuke. Itachi darted a look sideways at him. "Do you mind - ?"

"Oh, sure," said Shisui, and concentrated, drawing iryou-chakra to his hand. He passed the chakra over Sasuke's chest, letting his eye fall half-closed in concentration. "His lungs are fine. His pulse is a little fast, but still normal. No bleeding or bruising." He let the chakra fade again. "He's fine, Itachi-kun. Just sleeping."

Itachi turned the same unwavering eyes on Shisui next. "You should sleep as well," he said, giving him a calculating once-over. "You look...pathetic."

Shisui's mouth dropped. "Um, what? After all I've done for you, cousin?" He waved a hand at the room at large.

"You have hardly had more time to rest than I," Itachi said, narrowing his eyes slightly. Shisui suppressed a sigh. Itachi, once he got an idea in his head, was about as stubborn as a nin-bulldog.

"Fine," Shisui said patiently. "I'll take a nap here for a little bit and you can stand guard over my unconscious body, that sound good to you?"

"Acceptable," said Itachi, retracting the combination of pitiful puppy-dog eyes and air of disapproving cousin he'd wielded with as much effectiveness as he did a katana. He settled back on the spare cot with a self-assured expectancy.

Shisui accepted his defeat with about as much good grace as was possible.

Something nagged at him, pulling at him from the back of his mind where it had laid dormant the last few days. "Cousin," he said, his eyes already half closed. The words took too much effort; the inexorable wave of sleep was already pulling him under. "We need to talk."

"It can wait," Itachi assured him.

"Your eyes," Shisui managed to get out, the urgency keeping him clawing for consciousness. "Subduing the fox. The fox, getting through the seal. We need to talk about that."

For a long moment, Itachi didn't respond, and Shisui wondered if he - or if Shisui - had fallen asleep.

Then, "Later." His cousin's voice was low and tinged with consternation. "I will watch your sleep, cousin," Itachi said quietly as Shisui drifted off into an uneasy slumber.

* * *

 _"Ah, child. You should have known better than to hope."_

* * *

Shisui threw himself back into consciousness with a gasp and an all-encompassing panic.

"It is the sixty-second day of summer. You are on the Hanabi-ha base Shiroisuna and have been for four days. It is sunny," said Itachi, low and urgent and even. "It is the sixty-second day of summer."

"I'm fine," Shisui rasped, shoving himself upright and scrubbing a hand over his eye to avoid Itachi's concerned and knowing stare. "I'll - I'll see you in a bit." He shouldered his way out of the room in search of some godsdamned fresh air.

Shisui's little stunt of haring off Forward Base 25-35W with three genin in tow in pursuit of a Kiri warship had the unintended side effect of clearing his previously undisclosed psychological block on front-line status.

On his awakening, Shizune declared Sasuke recovered enough to be moved out of his single, intensive-care room, and into the bed that Sai willingly vacated in favor of bunking with his own team, and Team Suzaku, on the floor of triage room three. Shizune pursed her lips at the three cots crammed together in one corner of the room, the puppy pile of genin under and around the cots, and levered Shisui with a disapproving stare.

He shrugged helplessly.

"This is a fire hazard," she observed. Gimlet eyes glared at her from beneath the cot - Gaara, because the rest of the children were soundly asleep, curled comfortably around each other now that the pack was complete.

He shrugged again and glanced at Itachi for help, who looked supremely unconcerned.

She sighed. "Fine. Stay," she said, as if they all knew hell itself wouldn't keep the pack apart. "Shisui, Itachi-san, Kakashi wants to see you." Shisui was unsurprised at Hatake's absence; the captain had no doubt vanished the instant his medical leave had run out.

In the corner, a healthy distance away from Shizune, Zabuza rolled his eyes. "Fine, I'll watch the brats," he grumbled, before anyone had said a thing.

"You don't fool anyone, Z," Shisui accused halfheartedly as he slid his mask down. "You care."

Zabuza sneered. "I don't coddle them like you do."

"I don't coddle," Shisui snipped back. "I'm supportive, instead of an emotionally-stunted stone wall." He ducked out of the room before Zabuza could retaliate.

Hatake, as the highest ranking shinobi on the base, had temporarily commandeered the jounin-in-charge's tent. Said jounin-in-charge did not seem to mind overmuch, because she and her team leaders had moved to the beach, where they were drawing in the wet sand with kunai. Shisui watched as Itachi watched them with some bemusement.

In the command tent, Hatake's one-eye-scorched Anbu mask covered his face but didn't disguise the tension in his shoulders as he crossed his arms, staring down at the map on the table.

"Taichou?" prompted Itachi.

"Look at this," said Hatake, jerked his chin at the right corner of the table. "What does this tell you?" His tone was pensive, and that was enough to send the warning bells ringing in Shisui's mind.

He leaned forward for a better look at the map. The markers for the Kiri Hanran forces scattered the northern half; the Hana-ha crowded the southern. The markers denoting the six remaining warships were scattered in pairs of twos at the bases closest to Kirigakure. Bases to the west previously occupied by Kiri forces had for the most part emptied, their troop markers now crowding those off the coast of the main island.

"A retreat," said Shisui, unsurprised. "The sinking of the Jurojinmaru had to have been a major loss."

"Or an ambush," Itachi pointed out contemplatively.

"Look at the Rishiri Islands," argued Shisui, his eye drawing to the provocative positioning of Kiri forces. "The troops there? They're trying to make it look like there's a trap, even though their main forces are nowhere near."

"There can be, if the warships respond quickly enough," Itachi countered. "The Hoteimaru and Benzaitenmaru are stationed at Itta Irie. Given the distance and judging by the Jurojinmaru's capabilities, both are capable of covering the ground in less than two hours."

"They think we have a ship-killer," Shisui said, with a sideways glance at Hatake. "Would they really bring in their warships?"

"The Jurojinmaru was their smallest craft, and they won't be off guard next time," Itachi said, and Shisui nodded in concession. "They'd be ready if we tried something like that again, especially with another warship and the base so close."

A moment passed in silence as he studied the map, an alarm pinging insistently in the back of his mind. "There's something about that base," Shisui said contemplatively. "It's not valuable enough to have two warships actively guarding it, but enough that they don't want to abandon it."

The captain watched them both carefully with one unfathomable eye. "If we were to launch an operation on those islands, the strike team would have to approach, attack, and retreat before the warships' arrival." Hatake said, then paused meaningfully. "You can do that."

Shisui choked. "What," he coughed, eye snapping up to Hatake's even stare.

"You," the captain repeated, "can do that."

"Weren't you just saying that you didn't think I could handle the operation to sink the Jurojinmaru?" Shisui protested with a sinking feeling, because okay, he had been wanting to run an actual mission since Hana-ha joined the Kiri Civil War, but a kamikaze run had definitely not been what he was thinking of. He'd thought he'd start out with something relatively safe and only mildly adrenaline-inducing - infiltration and scouting, like Team Genbu.

"Well," said Hatake dryly. "You proved me wrong there, didn't you?" Shisui didn't respond. "You've been officially cleared for front line action," he continued, "As both Anbu and a captain -" Shisui cursed under his breath, " - you'll be assigned to high priority light assault missions that meet your capabilities. You'll attend and command briefings where you are placed, and will be expected to join Command strategy sessions."

"I didn't want the damned promotion," Shisui muttered under his breath.

Hatake stared at him. "What?" he said deliberately.

Shisui took a deep breath. "Yes, sir," he said, and resisted the urge to glare at his commanding officer.

"Itachi," said Hatake. "You're in command for this mission. There's something at this base they don't want us to find. Find it. Mission objective is to figure out what that is and to clear the base. We don't have the manpower to hold it down if we capture it yet, but we don't want Kiri getting comfortable there."

Itachi's hesitation lasted only milliseconds. "Hai," he said.

Hatake eyed him sternly. "If all goes well, this will be a one day mission," he said. "He'll be fine. Shizune's here for another two days."

Itachi didn't respond to that, which wasn't exactly disrespectful, but definitely spoke volumes of his opinion on the matter.

Hatake studied the map for another moment. "Another report on that sector is due to arrive in fourteen hours. If all holds steady, the two of you will leave in sixteen. Either way, I expect you both back here for a briefing in fifteen hours. Dismissed."

Shisui ducked his head in a bow and turned to go. "Shisui," said Hatake, and Itachi took advantage of both of their distraction to slip out faster than anyone could have called his name if they'd had the inclination.

Shisui glared at his cousin's retreating back as he swivelled. "Taichou?"

Hatake's dark eye caught his and held, and Shisui stared back, set on guard by the sudden scrutiny. "Tell me honestly," he said. "I'll reassign the mission to Momochi if I need to." He tapped the map at the Rishiri Islands. "Can you do this?"

Zabuza would most definitely not appreciate being called back out while his apprentice was still on medical leave for chakra exhaustion because Shisui had lost his nerve. Shisui eyed the islands grimly. "Yes," he said.

"Good," said Hatake, and didn't quite slouch. His hand went up automatically, as if to scruff through hair that was currently flattened under a bandana. He adjusted the set of his mask instead. "Kiri is circling its ships," said Hatake pensively. "Terumi wants the siege to be over before winter hits."

Shisui frowned. "It's almost the end of summer, and we've still to capture the inner quadrant," he pointed out.

"Yes," agreed Hatake. "The war is about to get a lot faster."

Shisui could do fast.

In his time in Konoha, Shisui had never run a mission with Itachi. At first, it was because Itachi had been too young, and later because either one or the other - but never at the same time - had been in Anbu.

It was with some trepidation that Shisui checked over the last if his equipment before sliding his tanto back in its sheath and tugging his mask down over his face. "Right," he said, turning to face nine sets of shinobi children eyes and Zabuza's bored stare. "We'll be back in a couple days. Listen to your Zabuza-sensei unless he tells you to do something I wouldn't do."

Sakura's visible unease vanished long enough for her to exchange an exasperated glance with Sasuke.

"Aw, Sensei," Naruto complained. "We're not babies."

"We'll take care of them, Shisui-sensei," Temari promised, dropping a none-too-gentle hand on Naruto's head.

"A-are you s-sure you d-don't want s-some a-assistance?" Hinata offered timidly. "W-with, um, s-scouting…?" She trailed off.

"Thank you, Hinata-chan, but we'll be fine," Shisui said warmly. "I need you all to rest up."

"Would you cut it out already?" Zabuza growled. "Gods, get the fuck out of here."

Oddly, Shisui felt as though he were the one sending the children off and not the other way around. He ignored Zabuza's ribbing and gave his equipment pouches one last patdown and the room a final glance. "Later, kids," he said with a wave, and ducked out before they could guilt him into staying with their pitiful puppy eyes.

Itachi was a reassuringly solid if slight shadow at his side as they left the southern shore of Shiroisuna, across the endless sparkling waves that Shisui was frankly was getting very tired of. When the base was just a blip in the distance, Shisui bit his thumb and called his crows from the breach between worlds. "Scout it out," he said aloud. "Rishiri Islands, 37E-26S."

"I have plotted a course that will avoid all known bases until the target," Itachi said as the crows winged their way into the sky. "Follow my lead."

The Kiri base on Rishiri Islands sprawled out in a way even the major base on Shiroisuna hadn't, in squat little buildings dotting the landscape instead of tall, structurally questionable, tree-adjacent tents. The central island even came equipped with a built-in cave system, which hadn't been on the maps or the mission briefing and which Shisui only found out about because of Mirin's eyes in the sky.

"Three options," said Shisui, tapping his fingers on his kunai holster. "One of us distracts, the other infiltrates; both of us mount a frontal assault; or both of us infiltrate. Dealer's choice." He rolled his eye over to his cousin, amused. "Option two sounds fun," he added.

Itachi considered seriously, eyes fixed on the distant smudge of the Rishiri Islands base. "Your skillset is not suited for a frontal assault," he noted.

Shisui shrugged, unconcerned. "It can be."

Itachi shot him a reproachful glance. "Not without revealing too many of your distinctive abilities." He turned back to the distant base. "I will mount a frontal assault and attract their attention. You will covertly enter the base and find out what it is that is being hidden."

"And your skillset is more suited for a frontal assault than mine," Shisui said dubiously.

Itachi's expression would be irritated on anyone else, but as it was, it changed very little. "I have had time to develop less recognizable jutsu for use in a pitched battle."

And Shisui hadn't? Nevertheless, he very pointedly didn't grit his teeth and said, "Okay. I'll just get in there and grab whatever they're hiding and meet you back out front while you're, ah, generating carnage."

"Acceptable," said Itachi, predictably, then jerked his head in the direction of the base. "At your leisure."

Shisui heaved a long-suffering sigh and drew his tanto. "As you say, cousin," he said, and let his Sharingan spiral to life.

He was happily quite fast even without shunshin or chakra augmentation, and it didn't take long before he was jogging lightly up to the westward end of the most outflung island.

Shisui was a master of genjutsu, but before the genjutsu, his mainstay had been sneaking into places he wasn't wanted. And Shisui had been very, very good at that since he was very, very young.

Kiri shinobi watched the underwater more closely than a daimyou guarded his coffers, but atop the waves, the sun played tricks on the eyes. No genjutsu cloaked Shisui as he skittered carefully across the waves, but nobody raised the alarm as he crept towards the shoreline. Chakra glowed faintly under the water - a guard. Shisui gave the shinobi a wide berth and sidled up onto the sand.

The Rishiri Islands were rocky, low-shrubbed, and clustered close together with narrow channels in between each. Shisui gripped his tanto backhanded and advanced slowly through the brush. Now, on the island itself, on the base proper, the chakra from a genjutsu wouldn't attract attention the way it would on open water.

A 'notice-me-not' genjutsu only worked well when there was a much louder, flasher distraction to divert attention. Instead, Shisui wove a much more complex, finicky illusion and draped it over himself - a henge, and just little something else, a vague yes, I'm supposed to be here andforget you saw me to clear his way into the cave.

He stepped forward, dusted off the front of his armor, and strode purposefully out of the bushes, between two canvas tents, and towards the caves.

A pair of shinobi in chuunin vests walked straight past without a backwards glance, and Shisui slipped into the darkness of the tunnels. He clutched the gossamer strands of his genjutsu around himself a little tighter as he walked, sidestepping a full squad in chuunin-jounin blue-greys, dodging in front of a single masked operative, and sliding unhesitatingly down the right tunnel the first time the paths diverged.

A massive bloom of chakra startled Shisui and he twitched, jerking around towards the entrance and the source. A dull boom echoed through the tunnels, followed by an odd rushing noise. A brief silence followed - then the shouting started.

Shisui took a moment to envy Itachi's mayhem-making and flattened himself against the tunnel wall as a squad stormed past. Once they'd gone, he continued onwards.

The first room he found held dry food - bags of rice, soybeans, and lentils. The next housed a training room, empty now that its potential occupants had gone to fend off Itachi.

There were far too few guards on this side anyways, and no tell-tale chakra traces to signify seals. Shisui turned and padded back towards the first fork.

That tunnel split as well, and yet again Shisui chose the tunnel on the right. He took three steps down before coming again to the same conclusion and stopping short. Wrong, again.

He retreated and took the last fork.

The tunnel sloped sharply upwards, then cut back down in a set of rough-hewn steps. Just inside the next doorway hovered a guard on each side. Shisui's genjutsu gave them only a second of hesitation before one of the guards snapped, "Hey you can't -!"

Shisui lashed out with his tanto, lightning quick. The shinobi blocked his first strike with a kunai but wasn't quite fast enough for the second. It slipped under one arm and between his ribs, and the kunai dropped from the shinobi's lifeless hand.

The second didn't bother crying out, only lunged after him with his katana drawn even as Shisui shoved away from the limp body of his partner and ricocheted off the wall. The katana clashed against the stone in a shower of sparks, and Shisui spun, knocking against the Kiri shinobi in a facsimile of an embrace and slamming his tanto up and into his back.

The shinobi let out an odd huff, and Shisui dropped the shinobi's body before he could cough blood down his armor.

Shisui gave a cursory glance to the two bodies on the floor before stepping over them. No point in wasting the time or effort to hide them now. He picked up his pace, darting down the now-clear tunnel.

He dropped his first, fussier genjutsu and spun out a second, sturdier one of oppressive darkness, hurling it out in front of him like he would throw a weighted net.

He rounded the corner right into the middle of a team of four. The first shinobi didn't so much as flinch, swinging his katana in a fast slash that Shisui just barely got his tanto up in time to deflect.

Right. Deprivation of sight had the least chance of hindering Kiri shinobi.

Shisui backpedalled, tossing up a second genjutsu, then a third for good measure, and as the Kiri swordsman pounced, the second shinobi tackled the first, driving him into the wall with a startled gasp. Shisui vaulted them both, landing in crouch between the third and fourth. Both ignored him in favor of lunging at each other, swords brought to bear.

"Kai!" grunted the second shinobi, and stumbled backwards from the first. Shisui waved just his fingers at them as the shinobi whipped around, searching, and hopped nearly out of the way of shinobi three and four as the latter landed an ugly gash on the former's forearm.

"It's a genjutsu, numbskulls. Kai!" snapped the first, letting his chakra billow out over his teammates.

Crude, but effective. Shisui grinned a cat's grin under his mask as the first shinobi promptly tripped over thin air. Shisui covered the ground between them in a flash, and the shinobi only just managed to get his katana between Shisui's tanto and his own throat. "Aren't you a clever one?" Shisui mused.

Movement out of the corner of his eye drew his attention, and he grabbed his captive opponent and whirled, even as the second shinobi stumbled drunkenly past, his kunai missing Shisui's face by a wide margin.

The distraction was enough for the first shinobi to yank himself free, and Shisui leaned back as the blade hissed just past his neck. He somersaulted backwards as the third shinobi lunged, narrowly avoiding his blade. He twisted midair and his tanto slid across the man's unprotected throat as Shisui landed behind him lightly.

"Fuck you," snarled the second shinobi as the body dropped to the floor with a muted thud.

Shisui gave a breathless shrug, calling on his chakra. Adrenaline lit up his veins and sent little sparks of electricity to his eyes as the world slowed. The fourth shinobi had discarded his katana, and Shisui could see in vivid detail the douton his hands were forming.

Shisui moulded his own chakra. Bunshin. Douton: Iwagakure no Jutsu.

Shisui dropped into the rock floor as stone spears skewered the air he'd been standing in. His clone leapt out of the way, rebounding off the far wall and directly at the first shinobi once again. This time, the swordsman was ready, meeting the clone's attack with his own vicious slash. The shinobi wobbled at the contact, and his eyes narrowed, but he didn't lose his balance.

The clone disengaged and whirled to meet the strike of the second shinobi, and the first growled, "Kai!" and shattered Shisui's last, subtlest genjutsu.

"Too clever," said Shisui as he erupted from the rock behind him. The shinobi whipped around, but Shisui was faster. His tanto slid through the man's vest and into his ribcage.

Shisui grimaced, withdrawing his blade and the second shinobi yelped in dismay.

Two of Shisui was too much for one Kiri probably-chuunin maybe-jounin. Shisui struck overhand, spinning a kunai into his free hand and slashing at the shinobi's midsection when his tanto was blocked. His clone lunged at the same time, and the shinobi caught the blade on his vambrace at the cost of Shisui's kunai plunging into his side.

The second shinobi growled, shoving hard. He kicked straight out and Shisui grunted as it caught him just above the knee, and he stumbled backwards. His clone lunged in his stead, and the shinobi ducked the clone's tanto, knocking aside one arm and slamming his kunai into the clone's chest. In the fantastically opaque smoke that followed his clone's dispelling, Shisui darted towards the glimmer of chakra.

The second shinobi died with Shisui's tanto in his throat. Shisui wiped his tanto off on his flak jacket and turned purposefully towards the end of the tunnel.

And froze.

Where had the fourth shinobi gone?

His eye caught the flutter of something light and pulsing with chakra. "Shit," Shisui muttered, and threw himself into a shunshin.

The tunnel exploded spectacularly behind him. Shisui glanced back at the fleeting beauty of the licking flames before substituting himself with a convenient rock, which was promptly smashed to pieces by a douton stalagmite.

"Not many are fast enough to compete with me," rasped a voice in the stillness that followed.

Oh, shit. The douton, that voice, the half-mask he'd barely taken note of in the thick of battle. Shisui had fought Yuugure Akagawa before.

He kept silent now, because his tanto and his mid-battle shunshin together were uncommon enough without battlefield banter. Instead, he swivelled warily, twirling the tanto idly in his hand.

"Oh, don't be shy." Her voice grated in her throat, as deep and gravelly as a civilian chainsmoker's, echoing eerily off the walls. "Tell me who the gods have given me the pleasure of meeting in battle."

Kawarimi. Another douton speared the ground where he'd been.

Shisui considered the tunnel carefully. "What do you guard?" he asked instead, pitching his voice lower.

Yuugare scoffed. "You must be lowborn. No one of high caste would be so rude as to ignore that question."

"That you don't know who I am is a greater transgression," Shisui said nonsensically, narrowing his eye. The Sharingan couldn't see through solid rock. The tunnel appeared as empty as ever, but Shisui wasn't naive enough to think he would make it through the other side unchallenged. "What do you guard?"

Shisui could hear the smile in Yuugare's voice. "Impertinent one. You, I like."

"Raiton: Jibashi!" Shisui snarled in return, and lightning ripped through the surrounding rock.

The kunoichi sprang out of the cavern wall between the crackling fingers of his raiton, landing with a low crouch in front of him. "Lightning jutsu, and a strong one. One of Raiga's potential successors then? Bastard was always picky with his apprentices."

"You were holding back earlier, with the other guards," Shisui noticed, flipping his tanto around in his hand. "Why does an eagle fly in a flock of cormorants?"

Yuugare's eyes glinted above her half-mask. "You caught me," she rumbled. "I'm not a guard. Shikuuken."

Shisui threw himself into a shunshin as the wind blade howled across the space between them, gouging deep into the cave wall behind him. His hands blurred through seals. "Raiton: Yukihyou," he growled, and his leopard's teeth caught Yuugare before she whirled aside. Shisui pounced in his jutsu's wake and pinned her against the wall with a hand on her injured shoulder and his tanto at her throat.

She caught his tanto wrist in her free hand, keeping the blade from driving into her throat, but didn't have room to bring up her own katana. Her face crinkled in a grin he could recognize even under her mask, as if they were friends having a nice spar instead of enemies fighting to the death. Above them, the rock rumbled ominously. Yuugare's eyes flickered up, then back down, unflinching even when Shisui leaned harder on her shoulder.

"This base has fallen," Yuugare rasped. "And I like you, little Yukihyou. So let me give you a little advice. Run. So we can fight another day."

Another shudder rocked the tunnel, knocking Shisui away from the kunoichi. In a flash, she kicked him out of the way and vanished in a shunshin that rivalled his own.

"Damn," Shisui muttered under his breath but didn't pursue. The doorway was unguarded now; he sprinted through.

Burnt-orange, the color of flames and sunset, caught his eye. He stopped short, because the thing that Kiri decided was important-but-not-super-important was actually four things.

And those four things were children.

The oldest watched his approach calmly, a kunai in one hand and three senbon on the other. He was maybe eleven, with blue-black hair that fell in front of his eyes - around Haku or Temari's age, and the stiff way he positioned himself in front of the others and the way his eyes skittered over Shisui's mask betrayed his unease.

Shisui's mission had been to find out what Kiri was guarding on this base. Mission accomplished; target found.

Shisui's implied mission had been to steal what Kiri was guarding on this base. He was pretty sure stealing children wasn't exactly what the captain had had in mind, but Shisui was nothing if not adaptable.

Shisui crossed the open cavern floor to the door of the room, the wall interrupted by bars in a floor to ceiling window and door. A glance to the right showed him a barracks room, to the left, a barebones kitchenette and dining area. In the room with the bars and the locked door, Shisui could see four pallets lined up neatly along the wall and small piles of clothes and equipment next to them.

The look wasn't hard to break - it itself surely did not keep the children in as much as they themselves did. The boy shifted on his feet, and light glinted off the metal shackle on his wrist and the tag dangling from its ring: 013.

The girl behind him looked around the age of the younger pack members, and as she tilted her chin fearlessly up at him, her brilliant burnt-orange hair rippled in the light streaming down from the barred window high up in the ceiling. She too wore a cuff, her designation 015. Further back huddled two even smaller children, dressed in the same plain clothes, shinobi sandals, and wrist shackle as the first two.

This wasn't just some temporary war base, Shisui realized. This was a training facility.

He swung the door open. The children didn't move, either to attack or retreat, but the eldest girl crouched a little lower, a kunai appearing in her hand. The ground chose that moment to rattle again, and Shisui sidestepped as a chunk of ceiling came crashing down. "The cave is about to collapse," Shisui said. "Come with me and you won't get hurt."

The eldest boy licked his lips, eyes flickering involuntarily to the tunnel entrance. "Where's Akagawa-sensei?"

"Gone," Shisui said bluntly. "Evacuated. Come with me."

The girl scoffed slightly. "She would not have sent you here."

"She didn't," said Shisui impatiently, and backed up a step, leaving the cell door open. His Sharingan picked out seals inked along the walls, invisible to the naked eye in the gloom but pulsing faintly with chakra and light to his. Others had been slashed through deliberately, their chakra faded. Shit. He was going to need a faster exit than going back up through the tunnels.

"We're not going with you," the boy said. "We were ordered to stay here. We're loyal shinobi. We serve Kirigakure."

"Your duty is not to die here, underground," Shisui retorted harshly. "What role have you served if you die now?"

The two older children exchanged uneasy glances. Shisui tipped his head up towards the sunlight trickling in from the sole grated window high up in the cavern's ceiling. A loud crack echoed in the air, and Shisui watched out of the corner of his eye as as a jagged rip in the wall split one of the remaining seals in two. Out of time.

"Come out now, that's an order," Shisui snapped, and the boy startled. He stepped forward cautiously, one foot at a time until he was out of the cell. The girl followed with just as much hesitation, and the two younger ones trailed in her wake.

Mizu bunshin no jutsu. "Two of you per clone," directed Shisui, flipping his tanto back up into its sheath. He took a careful breath, flashing through the seals and gathering as much chakra as he dared. "Raiton: Jibashi," he growled, and threw the lightning straight up. He followed it in a shunshin as the grate and the stone around it ripped apart in a shower of rock and metal and burst into the sunlight.

Shisui wasn't sure what he was expecting from Itachi's assault, since whatever he did to the Jurojinmaru was magnificently overshadowed by the destruction the captain had wrought, but he found himself both surprised and unsurprised to discover most of the cluster of five islands on fire.

Half of the tents had been destroyed. The other half, as well as most of the trees, had flames licking at their sides. Another explosion threw up sand and trees and shinobi on the western coast, and Shisui recognized Itachi's chakra dancing bright among his opponents.

"Now - " A bright buildup of chakra behind him cut him off, and he turned in time to see the girl knife his bunshin in the back. She bared her teeth at him as it splattered into water, landing lightly amid the rubble. " - I think you're very tired," he corrected, layering the genjutsu through his voice. "Very, very tired. Go to sleep."

The chakra left him in a rush, leaving him lightheaded for a split second. With a confused look on her face, the girl's eyelids slid shut, and she crumpled to the ground. Shisui winced and caught the boy who'd been in the clone's arms as he too lost consciousness. The others, in the still-intact clone's grasp, had gone limp as well, succumbing to Shisui's heavy-handed genjutsu.

The ground rumbled ominously beneath them, and as it collapsed inwards, Shisui snagged the girl and threw himself and his burdens into a shunshin. He skidded to a stop atop the waves, a good kilometer to the east of the Rishiri Islands, and his mizu bunshin had just enough chakra for its parallel shunshin before it collapsed. Shisui had a split second to form one more, catching the first clone's burden before they could hit the water.

He tore open his thumb with a nail and summoned Dashi, and the young crow flapped laboriously onto his shoulder. "Get Itachi here," he grunted. Dashi croaked agreement and winged his way into the sky.

Itachi appeared in a swirl of his cloak, somewhat charred, and blood splattered liberally across his white mask. He took one look at Shisui's four new acquisitions and levered Shisui with a severe glance. "This was not a rescue mission, nor a hostage mission."

Shisui glared. "Are you going to help me or not?"

Itachi reached over and scooped up the oldest boy from his bunshin, slinging him easily over his shoulder. "You are not one to abandon a mission objective."

"I'm pretty sure the kids were what this base was guarding. They're important somehow," Shisui said as his bunshin handed the smaller kid to his cousin.

"These are not clan heirs," said Itachi, and shifted until he had one child over each shoulder. "We have no way of knowing how they are significant."

"No," said Shisui. "But I have a guess." Itachi glanced up and him inquiringly, and Shisui grimaced, remembering the particular flavor of chakra from the flame-haired girl. "Jinchuuriki candidates."

The captain was Not Happy about Shisui's successful mission. Shisui thought it was incredibly unfair.

"Sir," he said patiently, still standing obediently at attention despite the shinobi children draped over him. "I was ordered to find what was being guarded at Kirigakure's Rishiri Islands base." He gestured at his armfuls of children, and at Itachi placidly at his side despite the two draped over his bloodied cloak and armor, as best he could. "This is what was being guarded."

Hatake eyed him balefully. "I don't remember telling you to kidnap four more children for your collection."

"I don't think I could keep these ones even if I wanted to," Shisui said. "The facility I found them in had some complicated sealwork on the walls, and I'm pretty sure this girl is at least part Uzumaki."

The captain glanced at him sharply. "They're not jinchuuriki."

"Not yet," Shisui agreed. "I think they're candidates for the next jinchuuriki."

Hatake's glare grew increasingly poisonous. "You brought four enemy shinobi who have been trained to become jinchuuriki into this base, despite the fact that Hanabi-ha is a shadow army fighting this war in secret. What, exactly, did you expect me to do with them?"

"I'm just a simple soldier, sir," Shisui hedged, trying for his most disarming innocent face.

Hatake was not impressed. "You're a captain," he said. "You can tell me you think I made an error in judgement in giving you that rank, or you can tell me what you suggest we do with the jinchuuriki candidates."

Damnit. Shisui hated it when Hatake played dirty, particularly when he hadn't wanted the promotion in the first place but was still trapped by his stubborn Uchiha pride and, as Zabuza would say, his fucking honor. "Yes, sir," he said, resigned.

He paused, his eye sweeping from the flame-haired girl to the boy with the blue-black hair to the two smaller ones, barely Academy age. Take them back to the mainland, he wanted to say. Keep them far away from the war. But these weren't his kids, and not every problem could be solved by running. "We can treat them as prisoners of war and give them to Terumi," he suggested tiredly instead. "This base isn't designed to hold prisoners, let alone secret future-jinchuuriki children, and we can't exactly give them back."

"Fine," said Hatake. "Itachi, send a message to Terumi immediately and request a squad to pick them up. Shisui, find the jounin-in-charge and arrange for accommodations and a guard."

"Hai," said Shisui and Itachi in unison.

"Shisui," said Hatake pointedly, and when Shisui glanced up the captain was watching him with wry amusement. "Welcome back to the field."


	14. Chapter 14

[14] Sai Is Still Learning How To Be Human

It's a work in progress. (In which Sai frequently misses the Point)

* * *

MISSION REPORT D-171

Contact with enemy combatants: 2 instances; origin: Konoha and origin: Kusagakure.

Injuries sustained by Operative Cat-15: minor sanguination, lacerations to left shoulder.

Injuries sustained by AT2: none.

Status of AT2: approximate age-appropriate growth achieved.

AT2 acquiring survival and self-sustaining skills, including: toileting, basic arithmetic, basic verbal sentence construction, identification and collection of fresh water, identification of enemy combatants, self-concealment in urban and uninhabited environments.

AT2-specific provisions acquired, including: clothing, food, nutritional supplements.

Returned to [REDACTED] base of operations, location of targets and allies ACSG, ACST, ACHN, ACNS, ANHS, AT1, AT3, AT4: collectively referred to as TAP73I (Targets and Allies of Protocol 73I) hereafter.

Conducted long range observation of TAP73I.

Resources acquired: uncooked rice, instant ramen, miso, acorns, wild rabbits, dandelions, cattails, wild onions, chicken eggs, fleece blankets, assorted clothing.

Method of acquisition: slight of hand, pickpocketing, snares, foraging.

Health status: adequate; slight malnutrition, improved from D-90. Slight signs of illness: AT1, AT3, ANHS with symptoms: cough, watery nasal discharge, throat irritation; non-life threatening.

Notable activities: conduction of sparring exercises, combat practice, chakra control, attempts at hunting and stealth. ACST instructed many of these subjects.

Enemy combatants in vicinity: none.

Conclusion: TAP73I is largely self-sustaining and in no immediate danger.

Plan of action: Make contact with TAP73I to acquire self-evaluations. Acquire and provide provisions to improve health, including: green tea, honey, chicken soup, salted meat, outerwear: insulated, waterproof. Operative Cat-15 to depart [REDACTED] with AT2 following provision handoff and continue to maintain minimal contact with TAP73I.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

* * *

"Itaru."

Sai turned to see _identification: Hyuuga Hinata; designation: Allied Target 1, designation: AT1; affiliation: Hanabi-ha_ _; affiliation: Yorozoku "pack" Team Genbu;_ _codename: Hana-Shi-009; rank: genin; alias: Kyuu, alias: Matsui Moe; alias: Tatsuko_ Hinata brush aside the ragged cloth that served as a door and set down a small cloth-covered bundle on the rickety plank they used as a table. "Tatsuko," he greeted. "What did you find?"

"One salmon, one tuna, and three mackerel onigiri from the dumpster on the south side of the market district, seven half-eaten chicken skewers and three pork, and an old cabbage from the one on the end of the south-central street. It's a little slimy but we should be able to salvage some of the leaves," Hinata responded, moving confidently across the tiny room despite the cloth that covered her eyes. She sat crosslegged across from him on their battered cardboard. "Is Rakushi back yet?"

Query regarding _alias: Rakushi, alias: Shichi; identification: Sabaku no Gaara;_ _affiliation: Hanabi-ha; affiliation: Yorozoku "pack" Team Genbu;_ _codename: Hana-Shi-007; rank: genin; status: jinchuuriki of the Ichibi; expected to report to location:_ _l_ _ower_ _c_ _ity_ _c_ _enter base at time: between 1600 and 1800 hours_ Gaara. Current time: approximately 1630. "No, he has not yet returned," Sai answered, painstakingly pinching together the edges of the rip in his spare shirt. The flicker of their lone candle gave him just enough light to avoid stabbing his own finger with a needle fashioned from a large fishbone. Sai had broken two already mending this shirt; their remains were in a neat pile beside him.

Hinata picked up a twig from their bundle of kindling, setting it to their candle until it too caught fire. With the confidence of repetition, she dropped it into the metal box that served as their makeshift stove and set their battered copper pot on top. Sai passed her one of their water jugs, and she added its contents to the pot. "I want to salvage as much of the cabbage as possible now," she said. "Is there food enough for tomorrow morning?"

"Aa," Sai confirmed. "There is still a little bit of the old bread from yesterday." Approximately two hundred grams, to be exact.

Hinata hummed acknowledgement, her hands quick and sure as she systematically dismantled the cabbage without so much as a wrinkled nose. Two and a half years ago, she could hardly look at a dumpster without indicating disgust by turning pale and faintly green.

A sharp prick in his finger warned against further distraction. Sai returned his focus to his shirt.

When the last bit of cabbage had been shredded and dropped into their makeshift pot, Hinata folded her hands primly in her lap, her breathing growing slow and deliberate as she straightened her back and relaxed her shoulders. _Observation: decreased heart rate, decreased respiration rate, decreased voluntary muscle movement; conclusion: meditation._

When Sai had broken his third needle and almost finished stitching the tear in his shirt, he heard the pad of familiar footsteps. Gaara shrugged his way into the room wordlessly. Sai lifted his eyes from his needlework to examine him. His hair, still dyed black, had a light brown dirt-dust brushing. His face was still, jarringly, too broad, his nose too sharp and his chin too flat - sand moulded unerringly as skin. His hands were wrapped in the customary cloth rags for his persona but otherwise empty.

Hinata's head turned in Gaara's direction. "Welcome back, Rakushi," she said quietly.

Gaara did not talk often. When he donned the persona of Rakushi, he did not talk at all. Sai had not heard his voice since the onset of the mission, approximately twenty-three days and sixteen hours prior. He did not speak now; he merely jerked his head in a rough nod in response.

"Tatsuko found food for tonight," Sai said in greeting, tying off his mending neatly. He stuck his needle in the bottom of the candle for safekeeping and folded the shirt neatly. "Sit down and we will eat."

Gaara shifted his pack off his back, letting it drop carelessly against the wall and took a seat on the cardboard. Hinata passed him a set of chopsticks and swung the now-boiling bowl of cabbage into the space between them.

The danger of using a henge for infiltration was that though the chakra expediature needed wasn't great enough that any but the best sensor-nin could notice one, it could not last indefinitely. One could not use a henge in their sleep, for example. Gaara, since he did not sleep, did not have that problem. Furthermore, he already maintained his sand armor as second nature, and the disguise was solid, not merely an illusion.

Jinchuuriki were designed as weapons of mass destruction on the battlefield, but even with imperfect control, Gaara seemed primed for infiltration. His greatest obstacle was perhaps his temperament, which was precisely why they had determined he not talk as part of his cover.

Communication was inefficient when one member of their trio did not see and another did not talk, but Gaara and Hinata did not seem to mind that they did not often communicate directly. Dinner passed in silence.

After dinner, Gaara scrawled out a tangled line of words on the back of a ramen stall flyer with one of Sai's charcoal sticks, then slid the paper across the board as Hinata collected their chopsticks into the bowl. Sai took the paper, skimmed its contents quickly, then shredded it and fed the remains to the fire. Absently, he wrapped his hands with strips of cloth the same Gaara and Hinata had, and when he tied the ends off, the last of the paper had shriveled into black. He could not see the outside from his position, but the moon must be rising now.

"Take care of Tatsuko," said Sai, standing carefully. "Help her with the washing up." Gaara nodded shortly. Experience told Sai that if the task had not involved water, he would have at least scowled, but Gaara had _observation: tendency to remain in the vicinity of standing or running water for a time interval after a related task had been completed; data: originated from an environment in which rain was scarce and bodies of water moreso; conclusion: developed a fascination with excess water as a result of growing up in a dry desert climate_ a remarkable tolerance for doing the dishes or laundry.

"Be careful," Hinata said, turning towards him with her face crinkled faintly at the corners of her mouth and eyes.

"I will return shortly," Sai assured them, and left the relative warmth of their room behind.

The rest of the building was largely unliveable. Broken glass and splintered wood scattered the short hallway outside, which ended abruptly in a set of stairs on one side and the door to what had been the warehouse's boiler room, since rusted shut, on the other.

As Sai emerged at the top of the stairs, a stiff wind tugged at his hair and bared his forehead to its unrelenting chill. A shiver rippled down his spine and he allowed himself to tremble freely, his thin shirt doing little to block the wind. He pulled it a little tighter around his shoulders nonetheless. When he glanced up, he could see the shapes of thick clouds through the tattered remains of the rafters and ceiling covering, light against the darkened sky - forerunners of the impending fog.

Here too, the street children followed the rules of the sun: as long as it still hovered above the horizon, the streets were safe to run. Once it set, the streets lost any semblance of welcome and swallowed the unwary, children most vulnerable of all.

Of the lower city, Kiri only considered the docks and shipyards as part of the Village. The rest, up to the natural barrier formed by the mountains, the shinobi left to the martial law of the civilians. The lower city was regularly patrolled and had been sectioned off with checkpoints, ostensibly to weed out dissidents, but the shinobi turned a blind eye to the crime syndicates that ruled with an ungentle fist so long as they did not disrupt the Village's affairs or greed for more.

Sai picked up his pace to a brisk trot, heedless of the renewed lash of the autumn air, and gave the grates in the streets a wide berth. Just as Konoha nin travelled along the rooftops, Kiri shinobi used the sewers and canals for convenience and speed. Though a few of the stores and food stalls still had light filtering through along with the soft bustle of customers and staff, the rest had been locked and boarded up tightly as the sun set, their occupants enclosed in the upstairs rooms for the night.

Sai ducked into the narrow alley between a grocery that often struggled to acquire fresh meat and a small restaurant that had no alcohol on the menu but would serve it if asked. The chain link fence at the end was four meters high. Sai sprang, rebounding off the wall and easily catching the top of the fence. He vaulted over neatly, dropping to the ground with barely a rattle of the metal. A hundred meters further down was a shinobi checkpoint, maintained at all hours, and he didn't have any identifying papers. Kiri shinobi dismissed the possibility of a civilian being able to evade a shinobi because of their inability to mould chakra, so Sai took full advantage to move easily around the city without detection. Sai had discovered that such registration and restriction measures only made civilians all the more determined; for every one that was caught, ten more slipped past.

He paused in the shadows, straining for the echo of footsteps or voices, but heard only the low moan of the wind. He stole onwards. Something clattered not far from him and he froze, staring into the darkness. _Observation: isolated sound not correlated by weather-related event, origin within twenty meters northwest and four meters aboveground; hypothesis: opossum, raccoon, or cat._ He darted into the next alley on silent feet, threading his way through the other side to the maze-like roads in the packing district.

There was a dark bundle on the other side of the alley, but Sai paid it no mind. The man had died at least three days prior, succumbing to sickness or starvation or the impending winter. The lower city was littered with corpses like that, which had died unmourned and which no one would know to remove until they began to smell. Sai slipped past and turned west, towards the harbor.

Two streets in, he reversed direction abruptly, backtracking a block and taking a right instead of a left. Five intersections after that, he did it again, going back two blocks and tracking around a long, low building that smelled strongly of preserved fish.

A little ways in from the waterfront was a rice import processing plant, guarded day and night by civilian guards, and according to his contacts on the streets, genin teams on occasions with a large influx of product. His patient looping lead him to the side, far from the shack where the guards clustered between patrols.

The plant was small, dingy, and had a reputation for inflating prices for inferior rice that the lower city residents couldn't afford not to buy. Strategically, it had no importance, and of the rice processing plants in the lower city region, it ranked seventh out of eight in economic worth. Its foreman maintained high fences topped with barbed wire nonetheless, and overall the street rats had dismissed it as a high-risk, low-reward target for nighttime thievery.

Sai dropped to his stomach and squeezed under the fence in the narrow gap between the fence and the ground, hauling himself through to the other side and slinking across the open ground to the side of the building to one of the maintenance doors. He paused for a long moment, tucking his head down against his shirt to hide the visible puffs of air from his breath as he tilted his ear toward the direction of the guards. Silence. He fished his lockpicks out from under his shirt and let himself in.

He eased the door shut behind him. The inside of the plant was far warmer without the constant chill of the wind. The lights had been been switched off, casting eerie shadows across the stacked bins and rows of machinery. He rubbed his arms absently as he wove his way around a stack of sacked rice pallets to a cluster of large bins near the center of the room. He eased the covering to the side and leaned over the edge; hulled rice filled three quarters of the container. Sai paused again, glancing around the deserted plant before filling a small sack with rice. He tied it off quickly, looping the string around his neck and letting it hang under his shirt before hauling the cover back on top of the bin.

Though he was expecting it, the shadow detached itself from its surrounding so abruptly he flinched, his hand going instinctively to the space where he usually wore his tanto.

 _Identification: Uchiha Shisui; affiliation: Hanabi-ha_ _;_ _codename: Hana-An-010; rank: captain; alias: Juu; alias: Naohiro; status: undercover operative; status: mission leader_ Shisui-sensei crinkled his visible eye at him in greeting. "Careful," he murmured as Sai's hand closed on empty air. "It's what you don't pay attention to that will get you caught."

Sai let his hand drop back to his side. "Aa. I apologize."

Shisui-sensei carried himself with none of his usual shinobi bearing, slouched far past the unconsciously military-straight posture that Sai had observed in many of the Hana-ha shinobi. His own tanto was nowhere to be seen, and he wore the rough haori-trousers combination in brown and light blue favored by Shinnyo, the rival to the Osore's parent syndicate. His hair had since been dyed to a sandy blond from its short-lived patchy white. He observed Sai with just as keen an eye as Sai did him, both hands shoved casually into the haori's pockets. "How are you?" he asked, the pleasantry incongruous with a clandestine meeting in a building they had broken into.

Sai considered. _Condition: insufficient caloric intake, fatigue, mental stress; compared to mission baseline: normal._ "I am well," he said.

Shisui-sensei hummed and withdrew a paper-wrapped onigiri from his pocket, passing it to Sai. "Eat that," he said "I don't really want to think about what else you've been eating."

Sai turned it over in his hands. It was maybe twice the size of the ones Hinata had brought back, the rice still soft and a little warm. "We ate onigiri, meat skewers, and cabbage today," he answered, unwrapping it carefully.

Shisui-sensei watched him with a faintly pained expression. "Yeah, okay," he said, but Sai got the feeling he meant just the opposite. "Well, while you're eating, thought I'd let you know that Kiri lost its fifth naval outpost yesterday. It's hard to tell, but it sounds like the Hanran captain Raijuu led a blunt force raid and razed it. Or the loyalist captain Kuramitsuha no Fuyumi won a major battle on some unnamed island and returned home victorious with some of her troops while the rest was sent to back up a different base. Who knows, with the propaganda machine." He squinted at Sai suddenly, who was rewrapping the rest of his onigiri. "You're not going to finish that?"

Sai glanced down at his hands and the half-finished food. What he'd eaten earlier had barely quieted the gnawing hollowness in his stomach, but his teammates had likely expended more energy today. "The others - Hinata and Gaara - "

"Oh," said Shisui-sensei, with a strange twist to his face, and pulled two more out of his pocket. This was the most food he had given Sai on this mission at one time - and a substantial jump from the upward trend since its commencement. Sai, for lack of any better course of action, bundled them all into his pockets. "You can give me your report whenever you're ready."

Shisui-sensei was technically a captain, but in Sai's experience, no superior had ordered a report given 'whenever' he was ready. "Hai," he said, and straightened nonetheless. "Gaara noted movement of suspected contraband between 0500 and 0530 as well as 1000 to 1015, and again at 1640 to 1655 at the east harborside corner grocery. I believe we can add it to the list of possible Passways."

"In the middle of the day? That's brazen," Shisui-sensei mused. "That's the seventh suspected smuggling Passway into Kirigakure your team has identified so far. What happened with the hostel at the end of the market row?"

"Tatsuko noticed that the same crates brought in were moved out four days later," Sai explained. "We believe it may be a temporary holding location."

Shisui-sensei nodded. The shadows draped the patch over his missing eye, harshening the angles of his features to an almost cruel bent. "Okay. Has Gaara been able to plant his trackers?"

Gaara's sand held a natural attraction to him for several kilometers without a notable chakra trace, in small amounts. "He was able to plant trackers in crates in three of the suspected Passway locations. As soon as they move, I will activate my scouts to follow before they leave his range."

The clank of a key in a lock interrupted them, and Sai ducked. Shisui-sensei flattened himself against the crates next to him as the door opened and the wind blew in with a low howl. One person entered with a heavy-footed tread, and the door slammed shut behind him. _Hypothesis: lone guard conducting a routine patrol._

Shisui-sensei caught his eye as the footsteps drew nearer, sliding carefully to the side of the stack. Sai followed, padding after him on light feet. He rounded the corner just as the footsteps clumped past on the other side, continuing uninterrupted without any exclamation of discovery. The little circle of light from the flashlight bobbed past and disappeared into the depths of the building once again. Five minutes passed as they crouched, waiting. Sai measured his breaths carefully, eyes and ears both straining for any sign that the guard might return.

Eventually, he heard the creak of metal and the yawn of wind again, and this time, when the door slammed shut, the footsteps left with them. Both of them remained frozen for another moment. Then Shisui-sensei rose, leaning against the stack of crates that had been their hiding place.

"Your scouts," Shisui-sensei said, giving him a long look. "Be careful. You have the highest probability of being caught. If your situation is too risky, let it go. You will have more chances."

Sai needed ink, paper, and a significant amount of activation chakra to use his Choujuu Giga. However, he didn't need chakra to sustain the jutsu, and his constructs could move independently - theoretically, into the heart of the village. But despite Shisui-sensei's words, Sai knew the window of time for his team's mission was rapidly narrowing as the war neared Kirigakure's shores. "I will not fail," Sai assured him.

Shisui-sensei reached out with an empty hand and _observation: familiar gesture of comfort; correlate to past actions and motivations: regret at placing members of the pack in dangerous situations_ Sai passively allowed the disarrangement of his hair. "Be careful," Shisui-sensei said again, and stuck his hand back into his pocket. He glanced up at the windows high up in the walls, where the moonlight filtered in gently in between the passing clouds. "It's getting late. You better hurry back."

When Sai slipped back into the abandoned warehouse, he was greeted by Gaara's eyes glinting at him from the bottom of the stairs. The fog had rolled in thick and heavy from the ocean, but the impending dawn lit the night with a faint glow. After hours of circling, Sai's arms had gone numb from the cold. "Rakushi," he greeted quietly. Gaara blinked once, slowly, in greeting. "Wake me up when Tatsuko awakens," he requested. Gaara blinked again, and Sai left him to his watch.

In their room, Hinata was curled up under the blankets, motionless except for the slow rise and fall of her breathing. Sai moved across the room silently, unlooping the sack of stolen rice from around his neck and setting it down next to their empty pot, then set the onigiri from Shisui-sensei next to them.

 _Mission report: delivered._ Sai eased his way under the blanket and pressed his back against Hinata's. She shifted slightly, her consciousness surfacing from the cold he let slip in, and stilled once again.

The solid tap of metal against wood woke Sai an indeterminate amount of time later. He opened his eyes to see Gaara watching him intently, having just set down their pot on the plank of wood with deliberate insistence. The warmth at his back was gone; Hinata drifted into his line of view behind Gaara, the wrapped onigiri in her hands.

"Thank you," Sai rasped, shifting upright and scrubbing a hand over his eyes. Gaara blinked and moved away to take an onigiri from Hinata.

"G-good morning," said Hinata, smiling. She held up the onigiri. "From S-Sensei?"

"Aa," Sai confirmed. "I ate some of mine earlier, but we could eat some now and save the rest for lunch."

"O-okay," Hinata said agreeably.

"Gaara, run a quick sweep," Sai directed. Gaara glanced over once, then down at his onigiri, and padded out indifferently, only tilting his head to brush the curtain out of the way. Sai shuffled the kindling into their tin for a fire. By the time Gaara slunk back in, eyes slitted with displeasure from the cold, their water was lukewarm and on its way to boiling.

Gaara dragged a piece of cardboard over to the fire, huddling as close as possible without touching the metal directly. After a moment, Hinata sat down as well. "W-we're going to need t-thicker clothes," she noted, rubbing her arms absently. "The w-weather is growing c-colder quickly."

"Buy or steal?" Sai offered.

 _Steal,_ signed Gaara, a malicious glint in his eyes.

"Buy," Hinata said firmly, already frowning at Gaara.

"Steal money to buy clothes," Sai concluded. "It will take some time." Gaara rumbled discontentedly, but offered no further protest.

"W-what did Sensei s-say?" asked Hinata, reaching to pour out the water into their water bottles.

"He acknowledged completion of the first part of the mission and warned caution on the second part," Sai answered. "The rest of the mission proceeds as planned."

Gaara took a bottle impatiently, tipping his head back to drink. He did not particularly care about the particulars of the mission. Hinata, comparatively, nodded earnestly. "A-are you g-going out today, then?"

"Yes," Sai confirmed. "Let me know if there's any movement. Rakushi, monitor the packages but keep up your cover. Tatsuko, stake out the location of the first Passway."

Street rats in Kiri were quick on their feet and wriggly as eels, according to Shisui-sensei, who probably paraphrased from Zabuza-sensei. Sai kept the imagery in mind as he slid in and out of the crowds towards the central market district. Many fishermen left just a few hours after midnight and returned with their spoils at dawn; with the sun barely over the horizon, the crowd of morning shoppers swelled. City crows and seagulls and rock doves hovered at the edges of roofs and streets with watchful eyes, eager for any scrap that fell.

Someone waved at him from the opposite side of the street, and Sai darted across to meet _identification: Etsuji; age: 10; status: street rat; status: civilian_ the other boy."Oi, Itaru!" Etsuji cheered, raising a fist to give Sai a friendly punch on the shoulder. "How y'doin'?"

Sai nudged him back, sending the other boy stumbling backwards. "Good," he said. "We ate well yesterday. Tatsuko found onigiri."

"From the baa-san on the south side, yeah?" Etsuji said wistfully, falling back into step with Sai. "Those're good. Me'n Kinkaro were in the west market square, tryna score some beef." He slung an arm around Sai _purpose: demonstrate camaraderie, dramatic embellishment._ "Steak. Food of the gods."

"Did you?"

The other boy sighed. "No," he said glumly. "We got caught unlocking one of the dumpsters and had to make a run for it. Who even locks their dumpsters?"

The complaint was a familiar one from the ones who ran in the more upscale south side of the city. Sai nodded sympathetically. "They are not going to eat that food anyways," he said, the expected response.

"Right?" Etsuji demanded with relish. Without warning, he jerked Sai into a side alley. Sai let him, watching curiously as Etsuji lowered his voice to a secretive tone. "Listen, Itaru," he began. "It's been a while since we ran our last hustle together - "

"Five days," Sai volunteered dryly. "I stole someone's bag of groceries when you bumped into them."

" - so we were thinking we could try something a little bigger today," Etsuji continued, undeterred. "How about a Rainbow Run?"

 _Term: 'Rainbow Run;' definition: a con run by multiple parties on one target; origin: named for the resulting 'rain of gold' in which coins are elicited from the target._ Sai hedged. "You just need a white rabbit for the dogs to chase."

"Look, man," said Etsuji, leaning in a little closer. "No one's better than you at being the white rabbit. Do you have your dues for Osore yet? Cuz I don't."

Sai mentally tallied the loose coins in Hinata's coin pouch and grimaced. "No," he admitted. "We're short as well." He needed more on top of that, if they wanted clothes for the winter.

"One Rainbow Run," Etsuji insisted. "You'll be good for at least two weeks."

 _Advantages: chance of acquiring a large amount of money in a short amount of time, ingratiate cover with local street children, avoid confrontation with Osore enforcers; disadvantages: higher risk of being caught by shopkeepers, higher risk of revealing status as shinobi; risk: medium, deemed acceptable._ "Fine," he said grudgingly.

"Yes!" the other boy crowed, raising his hand for Sai to slap. "It's gonna go great, I promise."

"You better get my back on this," Sai said, shaking his head.

"Have your back, you mean? Gods, you're weird, Itaru." Etsuji skipped ahead, towards the heart of the sprawling fish markets.

Here, the early morning shoppers wore both the patched, plain clothes of lower city dwellers and the finer, more elaborate outfits of highborn civilians from Kirigakure proper. The fish markets drew all comers, with wares ranging from stewed sardines to live lobsters and the highest grade tuna for sashimi - many of which were only sold here, and by and large seemed the only reason many civilians from the noble families bothered coming to the lower city at all. Before the war had started, there were genin teams stationed on a permanent rotating guard here to discourage thievery. Now, security was much looser.

Sai lurked around the corner from a stall best known for the quality of its salmon, watching the crowd of perusers and shoppers. A woman carrying a baby in a sling was jostled out of the way, but from the wear of her clothing, she would not have been able to afford any but the cheapest cut anyways. A man in a fur cloak wielded a loud voice like a club. A weedy man with a permanent squint shouldered his way through the line.

Etsuji sauntered up next to him, making a token effort to appear nonchalant. "Well, white rabbit," he said. "Everything's set. You good?"

"Ready," Sai affirmed, shifting lightly on his feet.

Etsuji slapped him on the shoulder. "Go get 'em!" he crowed, and Sai pushed off from the wall of the alley and melted into the crowd.

In the thick of the throng of people milling about the markets, Sai's view consisted mostly of backs and elbows. He stumbled over someone's heels, but by the time the man whipped around to deliver a stern glare, a trio of harried women had already bourne him long past. He steadily sifted his way into a wide loop around the salmon stall as the man in the fur cloak argued with the vendor.

" -ty-seven thousand ryo," the vendor said as Sai sidled closer. "Take it or leave it."

"Fine!" the fur cloak man snapped with ill grace, his hands already going to the heavy pouch hanging at his belt. He slapped the coins onto the counter a few at a time, thick fingers laboriously fishing out the rest.

When he dropped the last of the money on the counter, money pouch held loosely in one hand, Sai darted forward and slapped the bag with _trajectory: next to the target's face to induce a flinch, far enough away not to induce bodily harm_ enough force to send its contents spinning through the air, showering the unsuspecting shoppers.

Like gulls, the street rats skulking on the edges of the crowd swooped down as Sai snatched a handful of coins out of the air and bolted. The square descended into chaos as street rats chased the glitter of coins and shoppers shrieked or scrambled for the fallen money themselves.

"Hey!" bellowed the fur cloak man, giving chase, but as Sai looked back, the man stumbled over a street rat as the boy dove in front of him, scrabbling for a handful of coins. "That's mine, you little thief!" the man roared, grabbing for him, but the boy twisted out of the way and launched himself back into the crowd. Etsuji flashed in front of the man, jostling him deeper into the crowd, and threw a wink in Sai's direction before disappearing once again. Sai ran.

With this much noise, a genin team would be dispatched to assuage the angry civilian. Sai dashed down a long alley and turned two corners in quick succession before slowing to a nonchalant walk as he emerged into a different part of the market. His pilfered coins he shoved deep in his pockets, keeping his hands in them to keep the metal from clinking.

On this side of the market, the shopkeepers were unfazed by the uproar that could be heard over the tops of their tents. Their customers peered in the same direction with a distant curiosity, but one by one returned to their shopping. Sai wandered down a row selling fresh-cooked, spiced seafood, and just as he passed a stall peddling cuttlefish, caught the tell-tale blur of a shinobi sprinting past out of the corner of his eye.

He turned slowly and watched with a spectator's curiosity as the shinobi's team followed in rapid succession. He turned back to the cuttlefish vendor. "Three skewers of the fried ones, please."

Etsuji caught up with him outside the markets. "There he is!" he laughed. "The best white rabbit in all of Kirigakure!"

Sai yanked him around the corner into the closest alley. "Keep your voice down," he hissed, peering back to see if anyone had heard. "I have too much heat on me now."

"Don't be mad," Etsuji said giddily. "This is the biggest windfall any of us have had this entire year!"

Sai grimaced. That was the problem. "It'll probably be another year before I can show my face there again."

Etsuji shoved his hand in Sai's, passing him a handful of coins. "C'mon, that was pretty cool," he said consolingly. "Look, the boys chipped together a little something for our best white rabbit, since you have two mouths to feed."

Sai shifted the coins in his hand before dropping them in his pockets. A hundred ryo was a lot for a street rat, but probably a drop of water compared to what they'd gained today. "Don't call me for another job anytime soon," he warned. "I won't do it."

The other boy slapped his shoulder playfully. "Aww, don't be like that, Itaru. One of the boys is getting close with Osore - he thinks they'll pull him in as a runner soon. He can put in a good word for you, they're always on the lookout for a good white rabbit."

"No," Sai said sharply. "No one tells Osore my name." Etsuji glanced at him askance and then over his shoulder reflexively. Sai hesitated. "Osore is - not be kind to anyone they can't use. They wouldn't let me bring Rakushi and Tatsuko."

Etsuji nodded sympathetically. "He's mute and she's blind. I get it," he said, and made a zipping motion over his mouth. "My lips are sealed. Osore would eat them alive."

Sai thought bleakly that the Ichibi would eat anyone else alive before they so much as touched Gaara. "Thank you," he said.

"I'm off," Etsuji said cheerfully. "I've got some money to spend. See you around, Itaru. Say hi to Rakushi and Tatsuko for me."

Hinata recognized his footsteps long before he reached her corner. Her head came up and she frowned as he approached. "I may have made a mistake," he said in greeting, crouching down to where she sat at the corner of the street. The battered bowl in front of her had two five-ryo pieces in it and a piece of candy wrapped in cellophane. He emptied his pockets into the bowl carefully.

She regarded him silently, and Sai recognized not Tatsuko, but the mission-calm of her Kyuu persona in her stillness. She held out her hand. The cuttlefish skewers had long since grown cold, so she could not have smelled it, but he gave her one nonetheless. "There was some kind of fight in the fish markets this morning," she said mildly.

"I would not call it a fight," said Sai, "but I may have mistakenly caused more of a disturbance than anticipated."

Hinata pursed her lips, the skewer dangling forgotten at her fingertips. "This could cause problems," she said.

 _Potential impairments to mission: increased attention from local street rat gang, crime syndicates, or shinobi forces; potential consequences: decreased opportunity to acquire supplies or intel, detainment or interrogation; potential extended effects: delay of the siege of Kirigakure, failure of the siege of Kirigakure, extraction required from detainment or interrogation, identity of his team and Shisui-sensei revealed, severe injury or death._ "I apologize," said Sai. "I miscalculated."

"No matter," Hinata said lightly, reaching out for her bowl of coins. "Let's go back. There's nothing we can do about it now." She tore off a piece of her cuttlefish delicately with her teeth.

Sai offered his free hand and pulled her upright. She tucked her arm in his, and he guided them back towards their abandoned warehouse.

Gaara lay draped precariously on the edge of a metal scaffolding, high enough to be just on the edge of believability for a non-shinobi. The sun warmed the patch on which he lay, and his eyes were half-lidded in contentment.

As Sai guided Hinata up to the entryway, Gaara leapt down from his perch, landing in a light crouch in front of them. He sauntered up to them, stretching. Sai noticed with bleak dismay the tiny, smug smirk curling the corner of his mouth.

Gaara's hands formed Sai's personal callsign, then the signs for _white, rabbit, rainbow,_ and _run._ These were quickly followed by _fish, market,_ and _many-run-fall-ground_ in rapid succession.

Sai grimaced. "I didn't know there was a stampede," he said, but the excuse weighed heavily on his tongue.

Gaara's smirk only widened at that. _Three carts destroyed,_ he signed. He leaned forward to tug the last cuttlefish skewer out of Sai's hand and swivelled on his heel, ambling back in the direction of their room with a very pleased air. Where Naruto relished in chaos, Gaara loved simple destruction - anything that involved smashing, shattering, or crushing. Sai had hypothesized that this was the bijuu's influence, but there was no way to establish a baseline. He accepted the jinchuuriki's likely continued strange mood with resignation.

Gaara flew back around the corner before they could reach the stairs, the playful malice in his eyes vanished. Sai stopped short. _Moved,_ Gaara signed. _Second package._

"Second package is active," Sai said aloud.

"Go," said Hinata, letting go of his arm and giving him a little shove.

 _Estimated time to execute jutsu: two minutes._ Sai sprinted, Gaara hard on his heels. It was the middle of the day, so Sai was forced to lessen his pace significantly once they reached the main streets, dodging in and out of the crowds in the streets. Three blocks away from the Passway, Sai ducked into the back alleyways. "Watch my back," he told Gaara absently, and fumbled for the paper tucked in his shirt hem lining.

The thin paper unrolled, a neat row of ink rats bared to open air. He glanced over his shoulder at Gaara. "Clear?" Gaara nodded once, sharply. Sai flashed through the signs quickly, framing the sumi creatures with his hands. With a sharp pulse of chakra, the first rat peeled off the paper, scurrying off into the alley. Sai rolled up the paper hurriedly and shoved it back into the hem of his shirt. "Go!" he hissed, and bolted.

A large spike of chakra like that would alert even the lowest local shinobi, particularly in a high-alert time as in war, but in the middle of the city like this, there should be too many chakra signatures to single him out. Sai wouldn't know if his tracking jutsu was a success until his rat returned, but for now all they could do was wait - and run.

The end of the alley was blocked off by chain link; Sai sprang up and forward, curling into a front tuck. The world spun around him and he hit the ground running. Gaara, who was shorter, leapt lightly at the wall, bracing only the wrapped heel of his palm against the brick to prevent leaving fingerprints behind as he rebounded, twisting over the chain link and landing in a low crouch before sprinting after Sai again.

Sai turned the corner abruptly, Gaara hard on his heels, and emerged behind the woodworking shop. He switched abruptly to a purposeful but unhurried walk. With a muted growl, Gaara followed suit. The crafting district was as crowded as the fish market had been, but though just as loud, lacked the stifling tension. Men and women in sturdy clothing ignored them, occupied with their work or carrying crates as they crossed in front of them. Street rats lurked on the corners here as well, but waiting for odd jobs in exchange for coins.

The crafting district transitioned to the largest slums through a double chain link fence topped with coils of barbed wire. Three weeks in the lower city and a passing comment from Etsuji had showed Sai where the bottom of the fence had been clipped behind the shoemaker's shop. The shoemaker, rail-thin man draped in a leather apron too large for his frame and stooped from years of bending over his work, ignored them as Sai sidled into the yard.

Gaara stiffened beside him, eyeing the man with a narrow glare. He didn't move when Sai wriggled through the first fence and under the second. Sai paused, carefully untangling his shirt from the torn metal links. "Rakushi," he prompted in a low voice, but Gaara remained planted in place, his stare fixed.

Sai thought he heard the whisper of shifting sand beneath the din of the crafting district. "Rakushi, come on," he said a little louder.

Whatever caused his distraction, Gaara's chakra remained dormant, and the ever lurking maliciousness remained beneath his skin without bubbling over. He blinked, and his head swivelled towards Sai as if waking from a slumber. Sai gestured again, and this time Gaara slithered through the fence to join him, leaving the shoemaker behind.

Once in the slums, Gaara took the lead, bolting down the gravel roads on light feet. From an outsider's eye, it would appear as if he were choosing between the twisting alleyways seemingly at random, but after they had trailed across the bridge over one of the many canals bisecting the lower city, he turned a corner and stopped short in front of Hinata. Her hands were folded into a modified snake seal as she frowned in concentration.

"Pursuers?" Sai asked breathlessly.

"No," Hinata said summarily. "A team was dispatched to investigate, but from what they're saying, they can't figure out what kind of jutsu was used. The team does not seem to be specialized in tracking, and urban tracking is the most difficult even with a visual trail."

"Good," said Sai, and took a moment to catch his breath. He turned his attention on Gaara, who was watching Hinata with a tilted head. "Rakushi," he said. "Did you notice anything about the shoemaker?"

Hinata's brow crinkled. Gaara did not move. After a full ten seconds' consideration, he shook his head. "Did you observe anything that might threaten our well-being or that of the mission?" Sai pressed. Another long pause. Gaara shook his head again. Sai classified the incident as _hypothesis: Ichibi-influenced change in mental status, benign,_ inconsequential and dismissed it.

Gaara and Hinata both left early the morning after he released the first sumi rat. Hinata haunted the streets most days, in part because of her eyes, and in part because of her superior ability to acquire resources. The city dwellers were just a little more sympathetic to an aesthetically pleasing and innocent-appearing girl, and what she could not beg she stole with feather-light fingers.

Gaara had stayed behind the previous day and cleaned meticulously, leaving their possessions in meagre stacks against the walls. Sai spread out his papers on the floor. Most were squares of translucent rice paper, the kind used by food stalls to wrap sandwiches or maki rolls. A few had drawings only half-finished, just lines and curves and shapes spiderwebbing across the papers in charcoal.

The rest were fully formed. One depicted the view of the harbor from the hill beyond the fishing district, with the docks and fleet of ships in the foreground and the spit with the lighthouse in the back. Others detailed scenes at the markets, street corners, or the chainlink fences that partitioned the lower city. Several were of Gaara or Hinata - unsmiling in most, but one had captured the crinkle of Hinata's face beneath the cloth of her blindfold and the upward tilt of her lips.

Every one of his drawings had the guidelines still plainly visible. A swooping curve bisected Gaara's cheek in a portrait of him and Hinata together, and a gridlike pattern traversed his forehead. Sai studied the finished ones critically before setting them aside once again.

His charcoal sticks were all only stubs no longer than his finger, but he took his time selecting one nonetheless, and chose an unfinished picture to set on their makeshift table. Preparations complete, he absorbed himself in his drawing, letting the already established framework guide his hand. The challenge of charcoal drawing was that it could not be easily corrected; these drawings, where every mark held significance, were doubly so.

Lost in his work, Sai did not notice the passage of time until the ache in his stomach grew more pronounced. His hands were smeared with black when he finally sat up, the muscles in his back protesting both his prolonged hunch and the change in position. A picture of their warehouse had gradually taken shape beneath his charcoal: the bleak view of the missing rafters if one were lying on the rotted floors, and beyond, a hint of clouds in the lattice of the sky. Sai added it to the stack of completed drawings and brushed his hands off absently.

Sunlight trickled into the room from beyond the curtain. Sai set about boiling water in their pot. The only food his team had remaining was a chunk of stale bread, hard as rock from days in the open air. He propped chopsticks up along the side of the pot to make a rack and added the bread to it to keep it out of the water.

While his meal cooked, Sai had preparations to make. He leaned out the curtain to find the sun past its zenith and grimaced. _Time to arrival: approximately twenty-two minutes._ He ducked back into the room and left the curtain open.

Hinata had taken most of their money; particularly when either Gaara or Sai was at her side, nobody attempted to steal from a blind girl. There was about a hundred ryo left in their money pouch, enough for this week's dues. The pot lid rattled under the pressure of the steam.

Footsteps approached leisurely from the top of the stairs, too heavy to be either Hinata or Gaara. _Identification Shijima; age: 14; affiliation: Osore; rank: enforcer; status: civilian_ appeared in their doorway. "Itaru-chan!" he greeted. "You look well."

"Ohaiyo, Shijima-san," said Sai placidly. He gestured at the blankets on the ground. "Would you like to sit?"

Shijima's answering smile bordered on patronizing. "Oh, no, I wouldn't want to impose. I'm just here to see how my favorite little orphan is."

"Bread?" Sai offered, plucking the lid off the rattling pot, and steam billowed up from inside. The older teen gave it a dismissive glance. Sai set the lid down. "How can I help you, Shijima-san?"

Shijima sauntered closer, sliding his hands in his pockets casually. "Itaru-chan, word on the street is that you were the white rabbit for the Rainbow Run in the fish market yesterday."

Sai suddenly acquired a sinking feeling in his chest. "Hai," he answered anyways. "That was me." He lifted the pot onto their table gingerly, leaving another scorched ring on the wood.

He turned, and found that Shijima had stopped far closer to him than standard social conventions dictated. "Come to Osore," the teen said. "We'll be good for each other."

Most street rats scrabbled all their life hoping for an invitation to one of the syndicates - the only form of advancement open to those orphans whom no one cared if they lived or died. Sai ran through the cost-benefit analysis once again - _advantages: increased mobility, increased food intake, improved living conditions; disadvantages: communal living, increased risk of discovery, responsibilities of syndicate members, separation from Gaara and Hinata, increased likelihood of exposure to shinobi_ and said, politely, "No thank you."

"Reconsider," said Shijima, with a menacing undertone.

"No," Sai repeated, having already done so. "But thank you."

Shijima leaned back, his face cool and blank, but he was no shinobi and could not hide his anger. "Well then, Itaru-chan," he said. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"I have today's dues," Sai said, leaving his bread to rummage for their money pouch.

"You must be doing well for yourself," Shijima noted, sliding his hands in his pockets casually, "to turn down such a generous invitation."

"Iie," said Sai. "I don't have anything to contribute to an organization as strong as Osore." He offered the coins to Shijima.

The teen took the coins, rolling them around in his hand. "Since you're doing so well for yourself," he said with deliberate malice. "I will see you in five days instead of a week. Have your dues ready."

"Yes, Shijima-san," Sai agreed, eyes lowered passively.

"Hm," was all Shijima said. He swivelled on his heel, gave their room a disparaging once-over, and stalked out.

A twenty-eight-point-five percent decrease in time given to acquire the weekly dues of eighty ryo: this was the cost of Sai's miscalculation. The team would have to allocate more time to acquiring money if they were to remain on admissible terms with Osore.

When he returned to his drawings, it was with an unsettled feeling he could not decipher.

Hinata and Gaara drifted back into together around sunset, the former with a bundle of cloth in her arms and the latter with three bags - one of chicken bones, one of vegetable scraps, and one with cans of preserved luncheon meat.

"Itaru," Hinata greeted, brushing aside the curtain at the door. She now wore a baggy pair of pants, bunched up at the ankles, and a sweatshirt with sleeves rolled up three or four times that were long enough still to hide her hands. Gaara was much the same, but with the addition of a length of cloth cocooning his neck and lower face.

"Tatsuko, Rakushi. I started dinner," said Sai, gingerly lifting the pot of rice off the fire.

Gaara detached himself from Hinata and waved his bags of food limply in Sai's direction before dropping them in the corner of the room with a dull clunk.

"We bought winter clothes," Hinata explained, holding up the bundle of cloth in one hand and feeling her way along the wall with the other. "Jackets and long pants."

Gaara shoved his hand in hers, pausing her forward movement as he wrapped her hand around the hand sign he formed.

"And a scarf for Rakushi," Hinata added, the hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth.

It seemed that Sai, again, would be the one to bring a negative report. "Osore has shortened the deadline," he announced. "They will return in five days."

Gaara scowled instantly, a thundercloud darkening his face. Hinata frowned, her head tilting down to the clothes in her arms. "We should not have gotten all of these," she said.

"No, we need those," Sai countered. "Money is replaceable. The weather is changing, and our movements would be significantly hampered if we were to get sick." Though Hinata had caught seasonal colds nearly every year, Gaara likely would not sicken - neither he nor Naruto had gotten sick the entire time he had known either, though the colder the weather got, the surlier and more sluggish Gaara became.

Hinata's apprehension visibly frayed at the edges of her persona as she worried at her lip. Gaara had evidently dismissed the conversation, absorbing himself with opening a can of luncheon meat. The task of bolstering the mental fortitude of their teammate fell to Sai.

"Let me see," he said, reaching up to take the bundle from Hinata. The pants were simple, made of fleece like Hinata's and Gaara's, already worn at the knees and faded with age, and the jacket was of a water-resistant material. One of the sleeves had been half-torn off and there was a large rip in the outer coating of the back.

"I-I thought y-you'd be able to f-fix it," said Hinata, her voice almost a whisper as he turned them over in his hands. "And I-I have s-some extra c-cloth so we can p-patch the p-pants." She twisted her fingers together now that her hands were empty.

Gaara paused his efforts to pry the slimy meat out of the can to glare at Sai. "Tatsuko, it's fine," said Sai, in an effort to draw her back into her persona and away from her insecurities. "I will use a little tape and the jacket will be good as new." Hinata's shoulders slowly dropped from their hunch, but Gaara's glare remained. "I will mend yours and Gaara's as well. Thank you," Sai added. "It was good of you to get this."

Hinata smiled shakily, and only then did Gaara turn back to his battle with the canned meat. Sai marked the _task: maintain emotional stability of identification: Hinata and identification: Gaara; ongoing,_ assignment as complete for the day and scooped out the cooked rice onto a piece of cardboard so Gaara, staring at him impatiently, could use the pot for the meat.

Sai sensed more than heard the return of his sumi rat halfway through their meal. Hurriedly, he stuffed his bite of rice in his mouth and waved frantically at the general direction of his paper. Gaara snagged an oversized sheaf of butcher paper and passed it to Sai, and he unfurled it just in time for his construct to hurl itself at the unmarked surface. The ink ran along the paper in one thin rivulet, zigzagging this way and that before stopping abruptly.

Gaara had stopped eating to watch. Hinata had as well, cocking her head slightly to listen to the whisper of ink over paper. Sai scrutinized the ink as it dried, the long, winding pattern mirroring the movement of his creature. Piece by piece, he laid his rice paper drawings on top, and the guidelines formed an intricate map of the lower city and the mountains surrounding Kirigakure.

Sai studied the complete map critically, tracing the path the rat had travelled. It circumvented the center of the map, Kirigakure in charcoal-Hinata's hair and the charcoal-ocean. "First tracker failed," Sai concluded aloud. "The contraband was moved through a tunnel system to the far side of the lower city and redistributed. It never went to Kirigakure itself."

Gaara blinked and went back to his food. Hinata's shoulders slumped. _Again,_ Gaara signed around his chopsticks without looking up.

"Again," Sai agreed. Patience was paramount for a shinobi. "We still have time," he said, echoing Shisui-sensei's words from before.

In the morning, Sai took up some charcoal and a stack of paper and wandered purposefully out into the city. The Nurui housing complex sprawled out beside him as he walked, a massive collection of apartments and walkways seemingly without any organization. Sai had explored it thoroughly when he first arrived in the lower city, as well as its two sister complexes in different districts, each with an equally incomprehensible layout.

It had taken some time for his team to acclimatize to the odd tension that hung perpetually over Kirigakure's lower city, but Sai had eventually identified it as fear.

He settled on a low wall, propped his paper against his knee, and set about capturing 'fear' in sketched lines.

Villagers drifted past in tense clusters. A shinobi team strode down the middle of the street, and the civilians parted around them like waves around the hull of a ship with heads and eyes lowered. Sai watched out of the corner of his eye, capturing the path of aversion in curves and abstract shapes.

Muffled cries drifted on the wind from the alley next to his. A sharp shriek broke through the air, then the impact of flesh on flesh. The flow of the crowd rippled slightly in response, veering away from the now-crying woman and her assailant.

On the opposite side of the street he saw Etsuji slink around the corner, the dusky brown of his hair covering his eyes as he watched passersby predatorily from under his eyelashes. Sai ignored him, even as he spotted Sai on his perch and sidled his way over. He finally glanced up when the other boy made it to the far side of Sai's wall.

Sai made eye contact with him. "No," He said out loud, gathering his papers in one fast movement and hopping down.

"It's not a job!" Etsuji said quickly, holding up both hands. "No white rabbiting, I got it."

"No," Sai repeated coldly, turning in the other direction.

"Aw, Itaru, don't be like that," Etsuji whined, dodging around him to block his path.

Sai stopped short of bumping into him to avoid dropping his charcoal. "Someone gave my name to Osore," he said, a sharp edge to his voice.

"It wasn't me," Etsuji insisted, grabbing him by the shoulder. "I wouldn't, I promised. You know I wouldn't."

"They're making things hard for me," Sai said, scowling and drawing his drawings closer to his body defensively. Creating a visible reaction was not difficult when he thought of Hinata's reaction to the news the previous night. He shrugged the other boy's hand off.

Etsuji visibly wilted. "I'm sorry, Itaru, I really didn't have anything to do with it," he pleaded. "Look, I just wanted to show you something. It's pretty cool."

Sai considered him with a hard glare for a moment longer before relenting. "Fine. What is it?"

The other street rat brightened, and fumbled for something in the back of his waistband. He threw a glance over his shoulder and crowded Sai back towards the wall. "Don't let anyone know I have this," he hissed in a low voice. "This is a _shinobi_ thing."

Sai stepped back, alarmed. "Like the shinobi thing you could get thrown in a reeducation camp for?" he demanded in a low voice.

"What? No. Probably not," Etsuji amended. "It's not a weapon, it's just a book."

"Ninja techniques are illegal to non-shinobi," Sai said warily. _Hypothesis: trap to have him arrested for participation in illicit activities; probability: 14%._

"It's not a book about shinobi techniques," the other boy said impatiently. "Just - look."

Sai recognized the black bound book immediately.

"It's called a bingo book," Etsuji explained, oblivious to Sai's sudden stillness. "It's got all the enemies of Kirigakure in it. Like half of the thing is traitors."

Sai tilted his head mechanically to display interest and curiosity. "From other countries too?"

The other boy grinned. "Hell yeah. Check it out." He flicked the cover open to the picture of a scowling old man. "The Sandaime Tsuchikage, Ryou-ten-bin no Oo-no-ki." He pronounced the title with the carefully shaped syllables of one unfamiliar with written word. "He's like, seventy-something, but he can turn someone to dust with one spell or whatever. Like, literally dust."

"That's terrifying," Sai noted, reading the details as quickly as he could. _Name: Ryoutenbin no Oonoki. Age: 72. Affiliation: Iwagakure. Rank: Sandaime Tsuchikage. Known elemental mastery: doton, katon, fuuton, raiton, youton, jinton; extreme mastery over earth elemental jutsu. Notable jutsu: Gouremu no Jutsu, Jinton, Iwa Bunshin no Jutsu. Known weaknesses: physical musculoskeletal deterioration. Notable for having faced Uchiha Madara of Konohagakure and Gengetsu Houzuki, Sandaime Mizukage of Kirigakure in battle. Flee on sight order. Note: subject typically remains within Iwagakure._ 'Typically' had been scratched out and 'always' had been messily scrawled over it in red ink.

"Tell me about it," Etsuji said with feeling. "Good thing he doesn't leave Iwa. And this other guy - " He flipped through the pages, and this time Sai very much recognized the face staring out of the page. "Look how many nicknames this dude has - Reiketsu, Nakamagoroshi, Copy-ninja? How cold do you have to be, if other shinobi know you as 'Friend-killer?' I mean, he did also assassinate the Sandaime Hokage - "

"Did he?" Sai asked distantly. His mind seemed to slow, clicking uselessly over and over _assassinate the Sandaime Hokage; Nakamagoroshi: friend-killer; Reiketsu: cold-blooded; this was Hatake Kakashi, the captain, with the pack of eight nin-hounds, commander in Hanabi-ha, fighting for Konoha, assassinate the Sandaime? Assassinate? Traitor? Assassinate? The captain?_

Sai blinked and pulled his thoughts back into order with brutal efficiency.

 _Fact: Hatake Kakashi's profile in the Kirigakure bingo book listed him as the Sandaime Hokage's assassin._

 _Fact: Hatake Kakashi was a wanted man in Konohagakure after the Sandaime Hokage's assassination._

 _Fact: Neko-sensei, Anbu operative, had not trusted Konoha's leadership, including interim Hokage Shimura Danzo, to the extent where she fled the village with several underage, high-profile targets and backup in the form of one underage, undertrained Anbu trainee and one underage, undertrained Academy student on a mission given by the Sandaime Hokage._

 _Fact: Neko-sensei had taken steps to ensure the safety of mission targets and allies._

 _Fact: Upon receipt of Sai's report that the pack had been approached by Hatake Kakashi, Neko-sensei had instructed that they remain with Hatake Kakashi and had cut off further contact._

 _Theory: Neko-sensei was loyal to Hatake Kakashi, traitor and assassin of the Sandaime Hokage, and had delivered her charges to the captain as high-value bargaining chips._

 _Refutation: Itachi-sensei displayed genuine concern towards Uchiha Sasuke, his blood brother; Shisui-sensei displayed apparent concern over the pack members as well. All three answered to Senju Tsunade, last of her name, descendant of the Shodaime Hokage and student of the Third Hokage, leader of Hanabi-ha, who was unlikely to ally with the killer of her sensei._

 _Theory: Neko-sensei was loyal to Hatake Kakashi, in turn a loyal shinobi the Sandaime Hokage prior to his death._

 _Conclusion: Hatake Kakashi had been framed for the assassination of the Sandaime Hokage, which became one of the greatest sources of contention between loyalist Konoha under Shimura Danzo and Hanabi-ha under Senju Tsunade._

 _Conclusion: Hatake Kakashi had not (?) assassinated the Sandaime Hokage._

 _Incongruous data: 'Friend-killer' did not refer to the Sandaime Hokage due to the superior-subordinate relationship between a kage and a shinobi; this referred to a separate incident which implied a pattern of deaths attributed to Hatake Kakashi with whom he had a close or working relationship._

The information rolled around Sai's mind before he pulled himself back to the present, in time to hear Etsuji say, " - so he's reportedly popped up all over the mainland, which isn't weird since he's one of those - used to be one of those tree ninja - so he'll probably never come here. But if I had to get murdered," Etsuji added, with an odd tilt to his head that Sai couldn't quite decipher, "I wouldn't mind if he were the one to do it."

"What," Sai said blankly. His mind was still not functioning at full capacity.

The other boy grinned and socked him in the shoulder. Sai had to remind himself to flinch. "Like a murder-crush, dude. If you had to get brutally murdered, who would you want to murder you?"

Was this perhaps a matter of honor? Surely there was no honor in a brutal murder. Sai wracked his mind for an easily recognizable Kiri shinobi. "Momochi Zabuza," he said at last. "It would be...fast." That was, if Zabuza-sensei decided not to toy with his prey.

"Old but gold," Etsuji said cheerfully. "Hey, he's in here too - yup, Kirigakure no Kijin, talk about a badass."

"Maybe don't say that out loud," Sai muttered, suddenly acutely aware of their surroundings. Nobody bothered looking in their direction, but in a state as controlled as Kirigakure, Sai imagined very few conversations were truly private. In Konoha, the Shodaime Hokage's abilities had led to the popularity of a new phrase - 'the walls have ears,' because wooden walls had supposedly quite literally reported to him. In Kirigakure, the phrase was 'the pipes have ears,' for similar reasons - unsubstantiated, as Sai nor Shisui-sensei had heard of a such a technique that could go undetected, but many civilians Sai had spoken to had seemed convinced nonetheless.

"I mean, he's totally a murderer and a psychopath," Etsuji corrected quickly, fingers tapping nervously on the pages. "I bet they'll catch him soon. We've almost won the war."

The earnestness in his voice gave Sai pause. It was clear one side was lying to their own, and given his training, Sai could not shake the nagging, disloyal doubts. Who truly was winning the war?

"This is kind of weird, though," Etsuji added, paging through the book, and this time Shisui-sensei's distinctive mask glared out of the page when he paused. "They don't actually know who this guy is, or even if he's from Kiri in the first place. 'Yukihyou. Known associations: Kiyakyushu no Yorozoku.' Kitakyushu - that's in Fire Country," he informed Sai helpfully. "Or this one. Raijuu. They thought Kurosuki Raiga, but Raijuu doesn't have the Kiba, so an apprentice maybe?"

"Hm," Sai agreed noncommittally.

"This one is obviously Byakugangoroshi Ao, I don't know why he bothers wearing a mask…"

Once Etsuji had gotten distracted by his rumbling stomach and Sai had refused to steal from the takoyaki stand with him, Sai left the other boy behind and made his way towards the port. Clouds hung low over the city, and the wind flowed in unrelentingly from the sea. He wove his way through the crowds on light feet, hopping fences whenever he caught sight of the shinobi teams lounging at street corners. At the first glimpse of the line for the fourth checkpoint into the next district, Sai ducked into the Ikiya Inn's stableyards.

The stables were half-empty, only four of the nine stalls occupied. The horses paid no attention at all as Sai slipped past the innkeeper's wife as she stumped back towards the inn. He rolled his papers into a tight roll to more easily fit in his pocket and stepped into one of the empty stalls. He boosted himself up to the gap between the ceiling and the top of the wall and glanced out carefully.

Even from the narrow view of passersby from the entry of the alleyway, the district was _comparison to previous visit, six days prior: approximately 56% less foot traffic, increased defensive behavior and displays of fear_ quiet. The rooftops were even devoid of birds, an empty silence ringing in the air instead of the caws and calls of the crows and gulls. Sai frowned but hauled himself through nonetheless, landing lightly in a crouch. He sidled along to the mouth of the street, pausing for a moment just to observe _hunched shoulders ducked heads overall 22% increase in walking speed._ Sai paused, debating, but the desire for information won over caution, and he angled his way further towards the docks nonetheless.

Just ahead was the center square of the port, ringed by shops and restaurants. A high traffic area, visitors frequented here the most in peacetime, and even now, civilians came to watch the shinobi or the ships as they returned from the sea. Sai intended to draw some of the returnees.

The square was eerily silent. Sai's footsteps faltered.

There was a man dangling by his wrists at the top of the flagpole in the port center square.

Sai nearly tripped over his own feet. His eyes jumped to the shinobi team standing sentinel at the far end of the square, then back up at the hanging man warily, conscious of his movements. _Thoughts betrayed guilt, eyes betrayed intention:_ a mantra repeated in the early days of his training. A sign tacked at the base of the pole read, _'Traitor'_ in blocky print, and underneath, _'crime of harboring a rebel.'_

Shisui-sensei.

But the man at the top of the pole was _identification: unknown; height: approximately 170-180cm; weight: approximately 59kg; hair color: dark brown_ thinner, his hair longer and lank, draped over his bruised face. His eyes were closed, his mouth slack. The chains clamped around his swollen wrists clattered gently with the ocean breeze, sending his entire body swaying limply. His clothes were tattered and blood-soaked, and as Sai watched, a dark drop fell, hitting the pavement far below with an innocuous plop.

Sai breathed out his relief carefully, sidling along the side of the square with the same expression frozen on his face _wide eyes, no recognition, mouth slightly open_ and almost bumped into a woman hurrying in the opposite direction with her head down and a bag clutched tightly in her hands.

He stopped short, dodging around her awkwardly _decrease in speed 80% to match civilian cover_ and out of the corner of his eye caught one of the shinobi turn to watch them with sharp eyes. But Sai was just a street rat, _unimportant, civilian, no guilty behaviors, poor fighting ability, no motive or capacity to commit treason_ and the shinobi lost interest. Sai tucked himself into an alley with the pole and shinobi team just barely in view.

 _Purpose: punishment, fear tactic, remind civilians of relative powerlessness._ But that wasn't quite right - the shinobi lounging at the periphery were too alert to simply be guarding a prisoner who could not help himself, and who any others were too afraid - and too smart - to attempt to save. _Hypothesis: the prisoner was bait._

A pair of men stopped in a corner, darting glances at the prisoner and sharing a hushed conversation. One shook his head to the other's query, and with grim eyes, nudged his companion. They moved on.

A couple walking with their children entered the square distracted. The man noticed first, jerking to a stop and clutching his daughter to his shoulder so tightly she yelped a protest. The woman glanced up, then higher and gasped, grabbing her son roughly by the back of the head and pressing him into her midsection. They turned, abruptly, and scurried from the square in a tight cluster. The kunoichi of the team watched them go with lazy eyes.

On the opposite side of the square, a woman in a battered grey jacket turned the corner and flinched hard. After the split-second pause, she continued walking briskly, away from the shinobi, without a second glance at the macabre sight. Two of the shinobi exchanged a look. One flashed forward in a shunshin, grabbing her firmly by the arm. The woman screamed. The few civilians who had remained in the square scattered.

A street rat, no matter how bold, would not stay. Sai fled with the rest of the crowd, bolting down his alley.

He took a meandering path back to their room, backtracking as often and frequently as if he had gone to meet with Shisui-sensei, but though his heart rate remained steadily higher than his intent, he was not followed.

Gaara blinked at him owlishly when he pushed aside the curtain to the room at last. Their pot bubbled with soup from the scraps the jinchuuriki had acquired the day before, and as Sai let the curtain drop behind him, Gaara poured a handful of rice into the pot, dusting off his hands fastidiously. _Early,_ he signed.

Sai blinked, surprised, and realized that despite all his wandering, the sun had still been far from the horizon. "Yes," he said, belatedly, as Gaara eyed him curiously. "There was an - there was an incident at - at the port." He noted clinically that _stuttering: an inefficient method of communication_ his mind seemed slow and cluttered, incapable of its usual fast analyses.

Gaara noticed as well. His eyes narrowed, and he signed sharply, _what._

What, Sai himself did not know. Was it the bingo book entry on the captain that had so jarred him? The sight of the beaten prisoner hanging from the pole like a grisly flag? But those should not affect him in such a way. Those were merely facts, information. Neither affected the mission.

Sai shook his head. "Nothing," he said aloud, as he signed _not mission relevant._ Gaara stared at him, unblinking, for a long moment, and Sai stared back blankly. "I will rest, if you do not mind preparing the meal by yourself," Sai said at last, the information that stubbornly refused to be filed away in an orderly fashion rising up again to the forefront of his mind in the silence.

Gaara shrugged, just the twitch of his shoulder, and turned his attention back to their food. Sai edged around him to their blankets, lying down gingerly with his back to the rest of the room.

He did not sleep.

 _Problem: attempting to process the information acquired was negatively affectioning function; solution: cease attempting to process the information._

Hinata took two steps into the room, three hours later, turned her head towards Sai, and said, "What happened?"

Sai, half-slumped against the wall with one of their blankets wrapped around their shoulder, grimaced internally. _Probability that her Byakugan was active: 89%._ "Not important," he said brusquely, irrationally hoping that her doujutsu had not shown her what he had seen.

Gaara made an abrupt and possibly rude gesture with his free hand that Sai couldn't entirely see but that Hinata clearly did, from her thinned lips.

She was silent for a moment. "Is this about the traitor they have strung up in the port?" she asked.

"In part," Sai admitted. Hinata never could have spoken of such an incident with such indifference if not for her Kyuu persona. _Not, affect, mission,_ he signed.

"An emotional reaction is to be expected," Hinata said in Kyuu's cold tone. "It will pass."

"Aa," Sai agreed, though he did not classify his reaction as emotional.

Hinata paused, and posture shifted. "Oh, soup," she said, pleased, in Tatsuko's lighter voice. "You aren't eating, Itaru?"

It was Hinata's turn to stay in the room, but the next morning, she took Sai by the wrist. "Come on," she said. "I'm going to the Ureshi market today. Come with me."

Sai hesitated, glancing at Gaara. Gaara ignored them, opting to curl around their tin box stove. "I - " he started.

"Rakushi and I talked," Hinata said serenely. "He will stay behind today, and you would do well with a more moderate day."

Sai did not need the mission compromised over his previous day's experience. Today, he would have observed the fifth potential smuggling Passway site. "I have - "

"I need a partner," said Hinata plainly. "It is decided."

Sai could have overruled her. He was de facto leader of Team Genbu by virtue of his admittedly short Anbu training and the simple fact that neither Gaara nor Hinata had any interest in leadership. However, the mission would not be overly affected by staking out the second site instead, and maintaining team morale and cohesiveness was just as vital for success. "Very well," he assented, and let her tuck her arm in his.

Their warehouse room was far from the port. Clouds drifted by high above their heads, light and almost white against the sky, and the chill wind battered his jacket.

"The weather is nice today," Hinata said, her voice light. She shook her head lightly, letting the air ripple through her hair. "Is it sunny?"

Sai glanced up. "There are some clouds," he reported, "but the sun's rays are still visible."

Hinata hummed and picked up her pace, tugging on Sai's arm until he sped up to match her. "I hear a lot of footsteps," she added.

"A group of four is walking past on the opposite side of the street," Sai supplied dutifully. "All women."

"What are they wearing?"

"One has a dark red jacket with black buttons. Another has a light brown cloak and dark boots." One of the women looked up and met his eye, and he looked away. "The last two are both wearing sweaters. One is blue and one is grey."

"I've always wanted to try a sweater," Hinata said wistfully. "They're so soft. Do they look cozy, too?"

 _Cozy, definition: giving a feeling of warmth, comfort, and relaxation._ "Yes," he said. "They do appear warm."

She laughed, light and breathless.

"We are here," Sai announced, drawing to a gradual stop at the corner.

The Ureshi market was one of the largest in the lower city, selling anything from ten-ryo fishcake skewers to luxury fruit sets costing over a million ryo each. Across from them, the entry to the market took up nearly half the block, and like ants people trickled in and out in steady streams. On the opposite side were the loading docks, where products were moved in and where the employees kept the dumpsters.

The Ureshi market was also owned by the head of the Osore; the children lurking down the street belonged to its fleet of runners. As such, no street rat - especially not those paying dues for the right operate in Osore territory - was so foolish as to steal from the Ureshi.

"Let me know when the coast is clear," Hinata said, turning partway into the alley so her back was facing the street.

Sai slid over casually so his shoulder would block any view of her hands, checked over his shoulder, and said, "Clear."

Hinata's hands came up deftly in the modified snake seal her clan used to call up their doujutsu with a gentle swell of chakra. She turned back around, her hand on Sai's shoulder though surely she didn't need to hold onto him for balance. "Let's sit," she suggested.

Sai sat with the hard edges of brick digging into his back and drew, mindlessly, Hinata's profile against the market in the background, the way the cloth of her blindfold ruched up her hair. Hinata smiled at passersby and incited them to drop coins into her bowl with guilt tactics, including projecting innocence and pitifulness. Sai had tried that tactic himself, their first week in Kiri, but found it was much less effective when he was the one using it.

"There are five crates of rice, each with a box of kunai and explosive tags inside," Hinata noted absently, during a lull in the crowd. "There were only two yesterday. I see the sand in one."

Gaara's tracker. "Good," said Sai under his breath. "Status on the others?"

Hinata frowned, the creases around her mouth sharpening in her concentration. Seconds ticked by into minutes as she remained silent. Seeing, as she had explained before, was different from noticing - another reason she could not just look through the mountains for a Passway straight into the Hidden Village. Staring through kilometers upon kilometers of solid rock for the Hyuuga was comparative to looking through an endlessly deep lake in the dead of night - disorienting.

Sai sat patiently on guard, one eye on his drawing and another on her, and both eyes on the street from beneath his eyelashes. The Osore's pet street rats watched them with varying degrees of boredom and disdain, and Sai suspected _probability: 85%_ that Shijima had put the boy who drew everything, and the blind girl and mute boy he cared for, on some sort of blacklist, only less severe. A greylist, perhaps.

Hinata came back to herself with a minute shake of her head. "All good," she said with Tatsuko's cheer. "Ten ryo?" she directed at a woman strolling past.

The woman glanced dismissively over her shoulder, but upon seeing Hinata's hopeful smile and the bandage over her eyes, paused. Her eyes softened, and she dug through her bag for her coin pouch and dropped several coins into the bowl. Hinata beamed in her direction, her face angled just to the left of the woman's face. "Thank you!" she chirped, and the woman smiled back.

Curious, to smile at someone with the full belief that it could not be seen. What was the purpose? Sai watched the woman walk briskly away contemplatively.

The sun drifted every higher and then began its descent. Hinata reactivated her Byakugan twice more before turning a hopeful face towards Sai. "Fishcakes?"

"Aa," Sai agreed, and she smiled, reaching forward to pass him a few coins from her bowl. "I will return quickly."

"No hurry," Hinata said serenely.

When he exited the Ureshi market again he saw Hinata, the bowl of coins clutched against her chest as she pressed herself against the wall. Two teens loomed over her, the lines of their body spelling out arrogance and malice as they crowded her backwards. As he watched, one reached out and shoved her shoulder, and she pressed her lips together as she stumbled.

Sai crossed the road in long strides, the skewers of fishcakes dangling almost forgotten in one hand. "Leave her alone," he ordered, only just remembering to soften the tone of command in his voice. He recognized neither of the teens, but none but Osore's would be so bold in the heart of their territory.

One boy _age: 13-14 years; approximate height: 155-165cm; approximate weight: 46-50kg; hair color: light brown; eye color: green; status: civilian_ turned, staring down his nose at Sai. A sneer twisted the corner of his mouth. "What's it to you?" he drawled.

Sai pressed Hinata behind him gently, conscious of the tension in her shoulders. "She's my - " _mission comrade teammate friend?_ " - sister."

A glint of recognition lit the teen's eyes, and he looked Sai up and down. "The little drawing boy," he surmised.

 _Condescension. Intimidation_. Sai could not be more than three or four years his junior. "Please leave," he said, turning his head slightly to break eye contact.

The other boy _age: 12-14 years; approximate height: 152-159cm; approximate weight: 44-47kg; hair color: blonde; eye color: brown; status: civilian_ stepped forward deliberately. "Or what?" he said in a voice with more bravado than confidence.

"I don't think it would look good for Osore if their runners were seen roughing up a blind girl on the public streets," Sai said, staring just past the blond one's ear.

The teen slapped Sai. It wasn't hard - Sai let the blow turn his face to the side, but even by civilian standards it was meant to humiliate rather than hurt.

The first boy huffed a laugh, reaching out to grab the second by the wrist. "Come on, Kotai," he said. "We're just havin' a friendly talk."

Kotai ripped his hand free from the other boy's grasp with a snarl as Sai made a show of wincing, reaching up to touch his cheek gingerly. "Osore owns this block and Osore owns you," he spat. "We can take everything you have."

"What Osore asks, we will freely give to Shijima-san when he comes to visit in three days," Sai said placidly. "Please, we don't want any trouble."

"Kotai," the older teen repeated, his tone simultaneously bored and warning.

The younger one backed off with a thunderous scowl.

"Take care, said the older in a tone that implied threat and apathy in one, and sauntered back towards the market. After a pause and a ferocious sneer, the younger followed.

Sai watched them go, still coiled despite his loose hunch, until Hinata reached out and touched him whisper-soft on the arm. "You got the food," she noted, no trace of the fear she had projected just seconds earlier.

Sai straightened gradually, raising the skewers slightly as though he had forgotten their existence. "Aa," he agreed after a pause. "Are you all right?"

"They wouldn't have done me any harm," Hinata said with more assuredness than one in their situation deserved.

"That is an illogical conclusion to make."

Hinata merely hummed, tilting her head almost imperceptibly at him. Sai recognized the behavior as one intended to inspire protective instincts and handed her one of the skewers. She smiled at him sunnily in reward.

She paused halfway through her first bite. "The third is moving," she said, her voice gone devoid of its levity. "I recommend you meet Rakushi behind the cart-maker's workshop."

It was, in fact, just a suggestion, if a good one - Sai had Gaara's sand in his pockets; he could go wherever and Gaara would find him, as accurately as one of the captain's hounds. Hinata's choice of the cart-maker's workshop in the grey area between market and crafting districts would camouflage his chakra use while minimizing the distance both his ink constructs and Gaara would travel, a positive, given the narrow window in which they had to act. Still, he hesitated, his eyes drifting to the pack of runners that lurked still down the block.

Illogical. Hinata was a kunoichi, able to evade and weather injury by civilian children. She did not need his protection, not in this situation.

"Go," Hinata insisted. Sai handed her his uneaten fishcake skewer and ran.

Sai was due for another check in with Shisui-sensei, so he elected to remain behind while Hinata and Gaara left early in the morning. The previous night had brought another pell-mell dash to activate a Chouga Giga scout, so he napped, indulgently, until almost noon before taking out his paper and charcoal.

The heavy stomp of multiple sets of feet down the stairway jarred Sai out of the rough sketch he had been absorbed in. _Purpose: intimidation; desired response: fear; expected reaction: defensive behavior._ He gave the half-formed figure of Hinata a regretful glance before dropping his charcoal, dashing the paper to the side of the room in his haste as he lunged to his feet.

 _Identification: Tousuzhi; alias: Tousu; age: 15; affiliation: street rat gang Osore; rank: grunt; status: civilian_ ripped aside the thin curtain in the doorway and leered at him, leaning up against the doorframe with arms crossed.

Shijima stepped past Tousuzhi delicately, giving the grimy, cramped room a genteel once over. "Itaru-chan, good morning," he said warmly, reaching down to pick up the discarded sketch. "Is this Tatsuko-chan? It's very good."

Sai glared. "It's been three days, not five," he said, bodily blocking their way into the rest of the room. "We don't have it yet."

Shijima smiled. "Three days means you should have half the amount you owe Osore, since I'm being generous." Shijima gave Tousuzhi a dismissive glance and the other teen started forward purposefully. Sai lurched forward to intercept him - _alias status: civilian; action to maintain cover: decrease physical speed and strength by 80%_ \- and Shijima caught him by the arm easily, using his own momentum to slam him up against the wall.

Sai braced for the impact but still it jarred his teeth as he hit. Shijima gave him a pitying look. "Itaru-chan," he tsked. "You know better." He drew back his fist casually even as Sai gritted his teeth.

Behind the teen, Tousuzhi ripped up their blankets and tossed them aside, baring the cardboard used to pad the unrelentingly cold ground. Their meager belongings went flying - spare clothes, Sai's scrap paper and charcoal sticks, the candle stubs Hinata had scavenged from the temple. She would be distressed at the mess.

Then Shijima swung and the air left Sai's lungs in a rush as he let his head snap to the side with the blow. Pain bloomed across his cheek and he blinked away the sting. Shijima reached out to take his chin with a firm hand, forcibly turning his head back to the front. "Face me. Don't be rude," he admonished. The next blow split skin. Sai panted but obediently turned his head back to the front when the teen tapped on his chin warningly. Another hit - starbursts exploded across his eye. He turned his head. Another.

 _Ninja: a person who must endure._ Sai did not find the experience pleasant, but simply a task to be endured.

"Ah," said Shijima, and Sai aborted a flinch but the older boy wasn't looking at him. He held out his hand to Tousuzhi instead, who passed him several coins. He rolled them around thoughtfully, uncaring of the blood that dripped from his bruised knuckles. "Twenty ryo. You were holding out on us." He turned a disapproving stare on Sai, who glared back despite his rapidly swelling eye. Shijima let go of his shoulder, and without his grip, Sai let himself slide to the floor.

Shijima crouched and gently but firmly seized him by the hair. "A hundred ryo by Friday, instead of eighty," he said. "For being difficult." He gave Sai a little shake that sent spikes of pain shooting through his head. "Understand?"

Sai could taste blood in his mouth. Endure. "Yes," he rasped, and didn't think of how easy it would be to kill this civilian masquerading with a semblance of power.

Shijima smiled and patted his bruised cheek, pocketing the twenty ryo Hinata had hidden away the day before. "I'm glad we had this discussion," he said. "We'll see you in two days. Give Tatsuko-chan and Rakushi-chan our best, won't you?" He gave Sai a parting kick to the ribs that knocked the wind from his lungs.

Sai watched them go from the floor with bleary eyes, the side of his head pressed against the cold concrete, until their footsteps had long since faded from his hearing. Then he picked himself up, rummaged through the mess Tousuzhi had made of their things until he found their water jugs, and went to fetch some fresh water.

His earlier contemplation _h_ _ypothesis:_ _Hinata would be distressed upon seeing the mess the Osore members had wrought_ proved correct. Hinata stopped short at the doorway, where their curtain had been ripped half off the nails hammered into the doorframe to keep it up, and touched it with a frown. "Itaru?" she demanded, alarm raising her voice as she felt her way into the room. Her foot knocked against their overturned pot, and she halted as it clattered across the ground.

"Aa. Give me one moment," said Sai, dropping a bit of kindling he had scrounged from the floor back into its tin. He picked his way across the debris and reached out to take her arm.

He guided her forward and around the bits and pieces he hadn't gotten around to picking up yet, and she twisted in his grip to reach up and touch his face. He let her feel around the scab on his cheek and trace the edges of his swollen eye without flinching. When she drew her hand back at last, her mouth was pressed into a tight line. "What happened?"

"Osore came early," Sai explained, tugging on her arm until she followed him to where he had replaced the cardboard and arranged the blankets on top. "They took your money. I apologize."

"Don't a-a-apologize for that." Hinata frowned up at him, her agitation stirring her stutter, and felt around the ground next to her. Her hands closed on a candle, and she lined it up next to her on the blanket before reaching out for more.

Sai paused. "I hoped I would have time to clean before your return," he offered instead. "However - "

"O-or that," she interrupted, and even with the cloth over her eyes Sai could tell she was glaring. _Observation: heavy movements, sharp tone, tense shoulders; hypothesis: anger directed at unreachable target_. Sai let the conversation drop and wordlessly gathered the rest of the scattered kindling.

The ground rumbled beneath their feet, individual grains of sand rattling in the cracks in the concrete. Sai's head shot up, alarmed, mirrored by Hinata. Gaara's anger was palpable as he stormed down the stairs, and Sai jackknifed to his feet despite the sharp pain in his ribs. "Rakushi, I'm fine," he wheezed. "You need to calm yourself."

Sai suspected Gaara would have ripped the curtain aside if it hadn't already been torn. His eyes flashed with rage, and his face twisted in a snarl as he took in the half-cleaned destruction of the room. His glare snapped to Sai's face, and his scowl deepened as they drifted from Sai's swollen eye to the purple bruising around his cheekbone and the scabbed-over cut at the edge of his mouth. He gestured sharply.

"I will not tell you who did it," Sai said with dignity.

Gaara's eyes narrowed to slits. _I, know, bastard, kill,_ he signed.

"Y-you are n-not allowed to k-kill the c-civilian," said Hinata, though she could not have seen what he signed.

 _Kill,_ Gaara signed again, more empathetically. _Wound, Sai, not allow, I, kill._

"Calm down," Sai said harshly. "You'll draw Kiri's forces down on us."

Gaara snarled but closed his eyes, and with visible effort, the sand settled, the sakki sinking slowly back under his skin. Gimlet eyes opened again and he stalked forward, advancing until he stood less than ten centimeters from Sai. Sai glanced down at him wearily, energy gone though he had done nothing to spend it.

Gaara glared back up at him, then reached out to probe his face with a none-too-gentle finger. Sai leaned back and tried to brush him aside, but the jinchuuriki slapped his arm aside roughly, jarring his ribs. He bit back a hiss as Gaara prodded along his jawline.

His finger came away red. Sai watched out of his one unswollen eye as the blood vanished little by little, absorbed into Gaara's sand armor. Gaara mirrored him, staring with odd intensity until it had disappeared entirely. Then he growled wordlessly, whirled on his heel, and with a brief spike of killing intent, stalked back out their ruined curtain.

 _Fear: a natural human emotion elicited by awareness of danger._ Sai recognized such a reaction in himself and Hinata, both with muscles tensed and ready as their teammate stormed from the room. Finally, Sai tilted his head to better dab at the bruising around his eye, sliding backwards to put his back to the wall.

"D-dinner," Hinata whispered into the silence. "W-we d-don't h-have anything."

Gaara was supposed to bring food for dinner, but his sense of duty was barely strong enough to maintain his cover on a good day, let alone perform an errand after his control had slipped so conspicuously. "Missing one meal will do us no harm," Sai said, dragging the words from his mouth.

Gaara had not returned by the time Sai left. The path he took to the meeting point with Shisui-sensei was no longer than any route he had taken previously, but when he finally slipped through the maintenance door of the rice packing plant, he was winded, his limbs shaking from the unusually large amount of effort it had taken to make it there.

Perhaps it had taken longer than usual, because Shisui-sensei was already pacing between the stacks on light feet. He pulled up abruptly at Sai's entrance. Sai straightened almost unconsciously despite the twinge in his ribs.

Shisui-sensei's single eye tracked Sai's face in silence. "Who did that?" he asked. His tone held none of Hinata's tight panic or Gaara's barely restrained fury - it was empty, devoid of emotion.

The idea of hiding information from his sensei and commanding officer was not one that even occurred to Sai. "Two members of Osore."

Shisui-sensei nodded almost absently. "Why?"

Sai swallowed down the sudden inexplicable dryness in his throat. "I made a miscalculation and attracted the attention of a member of Osore, who offered me an invitation to join as a runner. I declined. The member took offense."

Shisui-sensei regarded him wordlessly.

"It will not impair the mission. It will not affect my performance," Sai assured him, clasping his hands behind his back.

"That was not my concern," Shisui-sensei retorted. He raised his hand, green chakra wavering just over the surface of his skin.

Sai leaned back, alarm widening his eyes. "Sensei - iryo chakra - you - will that not be detected?" he asked, confusion stealing the words from his mouth. "I am not seriously injured; it's not worth the risk."

"This is only diagnostic, to make sure the damage won't be permanent. A small amount of exposure over a short amount of time will not be noticed," Shisui-sensei said, an edge to his usual mildness. "It is worth whatever risk I deem acceptable, and it will take less time if you cooperate."

"I apologize," said Sai, chastened, and this time he didn't move when his sensei reached forward. Shisui-sensei pressed a glowing hand against Sai's chest, concentrating. "No cracked ribs," he murmured aloud, then frowned abruptly. "Your diaphragm is torn," he said reproachfully. The chakra in his hand intensified, and the persistent pulling pain when Sai breathed lessened even though Shisui-sensei had said he would not heal, but one look at his sensei's face warned him not to protest.

Shisui-sensei's hand drifted higher, exploratory over his jaw, and the chakra was warm against his face. With one last pass over Sai's eye, the chakra cupped in his hand flickered and dissipated.

"You'll be fine," Shisui-sensei said at last. "Superficial damage and bruising. A blood vessel in your eye burst, so the white of your eye will be bright red for some time." He stepped back, and this time when he looked at Sai there was a mixture of fondness and irritation. "Maybe I should have made it part of your mission to avoid injury."

Sai accepted the rebuke in silence. "Would you like my report?" he offered.

"There was more? It's a miracle you had time for anything else," Shisui-sensei said dryly, but flapped his hand at him nonetheless.

For once, Sai would have liked to report some form of success, but he could not change facts.

"Look, Sai," said Shisui-sensei, sliding his hands into his pockets once Sai had concluded. "This mission is pretty damn important, or we wouldn't even consider putting a genin team in."

"Yes," Sai acknowledged, a little bemused. "Our team's capabilities make us ideal for this form of gathering information."

Shisui-sensei sighed, and Sai wondered if he had once again missed the subtext. "What I'm saying," Shisui-sensei said, almost gently, "is that this mission isn't much like Kitakyushu. You can't use chakra freely here and expect it to be explained away by a visiting shinobi. It'd be a difficult mission for even experienced shinobi."

Sai frowned, his chin jerking back involuntarily. "You believe we lack the skill and experience to execute it correctly."

Shisui-sensei blew out an almost frustrated huff. "I believe this isn't a mission you should have been assigned to, to begin with. Your team is performing admirably, but look at you." Sai glanced down reflexively. "You've lost weight. Muscle mass. You're exhibiting constant fatigue. You've been subjected to all sorts of abuse," he added, waving his hand to indicate Sai's bruised face.

Sai tilted his head to demonstrate confusion. "Of all the teams, Genbu has suffered the fewest major injuries." he pointed out. "Comparatively, this is insignificant. Injuries should be expected during a wartime mission in enemy territory."

Shisui grimaced and, once again, seemed to Sai's eyes very tired. "What I'm saying," he repeated, with more emphasis. "Is be careful. You're not the only team on this sort of mission. The Hanran have operatives embedded in the city as well, and I'm working on the Shinnyo angle. The mission is important, yes, but you need to take care of yourself and take care of the others." His sensei ran an absentminded hand through his unruly hair before replacing it in his pocket, regarding Sai soberly. "They can't make it, without you."

Was it not an underestimation of Hinata and Gaara's abilities - oh. This was a tactic used to ensure compliance by invoking emotional bonds. "I will. Take care of them."

"Keep watching the Passways. Send your trackers down them," Shisui-sensei directed. "But nothing more. Don't scout out new ones, no investigating suspicious activity, avoid all shinobi. Take it easy, keep your heads down, get some good food and quit losing weight."

Sai decided not to point out that with his cover, acquiring 'good food' would be difficult. Perhaps Shisui-sensei had seen it on his face anyways, because he reached under his haori and handed Sai a cloth sack. "That's food and money," he said. "Stay safe."

When Sai made it back to the warehouse, wind-chilled and awake only through sheer stubbornness, Gaara, lurking at the base of a pillar next to the stairs, ignored him. Sai lifted the bag. "Come inside," he said. "Sensei sent us food."

Gaara must have been hungry - none of their team had eaten since perhaps noon, but the younger boy did not even look at him. He glared stonily through too-long bangs at the far wall and cracked glass of the windows to the night beyond.

Sai knew he could not force a response from his reticent teammate, particularly when he nursed what appeared to be a grudge against Sai for allowing himself to be injured. Sai blinked the bleariness from his eyes and left him to his silence.

Perhaps Hinata had been sleeping before, but she turned her head as Sai entered. She was half-slumped against the wall, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

"Did you wait up?" Sai asked. She nodded slightly. "You should not have. You require rest."

"A-as do y-you."

Sai rustled the bag in his hand. Metal clicked faintly within. "Food and money from Sensei," he explained. "We can eat, and then sleep."

Hinata held out her hand, and he passed the bag over. "Y-you're cold," she noted, as her fingers brushed his. She pushed another of the blankets in his direction, then leaned over absently to add kindling to their cooking fire tin.

"I am fine," he assured her, but his prominent injuries must have made him seem particularly unconvincing, because she tilted her head at him pointedly in a way that told him her doujutsu was active.

"No," she countered shortly. Sai let the thread of conversation drop. The food was small containers of stew, thick with chunks of seafood and tofu, and reddish in a way that promised to be spicy. Hinata poured them into the pot to let the food heat, then rummaged through the bag once more and came up with a loaf of bread.

"We should consider saving some food for tomorrow," Sai said, even as he wrapped the blanket around his old shoulders. "The room needs reorganizing, and we may not have time to acquire more."

"N-no," Hinata said decisively, lifting her chin with unexpected defiance. "W-we will e-eat our f-fill t-tonight and w-worry about tomorrow t-tomorrow."

Assertiveness did not come easy to Hinata. If Sai refuted her now, her fragile resistance would crumble like a house made of paper.

Sai was tired. Perhaps it was a weakness, but for just one night, he wanted to eat until his stomach was warm and full. "Very well," he said, and Hinata's smile lit her face.

Gaara prowled in some minutes later, lured by the scent of the stew wafting through the air as it warmed. He did not acknowledge either of them but inserted himself between them, burrowing his feet in the blankets and leaning over the steam drifting up from the pot.

Sai, inexplicably, felt the most comfortable he had been since the mission's start.

There was a tiger sitting in the Doushaburi market square. Sai blinked. And then blinked again. He didn't quite dare disrupt his chakra to check for genjutsu, but a woman turned the corner next to him, flinched and said, "oh, fuck," before continuing on her way, so he was at least reassured that he was not the only one seeing the creature.

It was huge and thick-furred, orange-amber and streaked with inky stripes, and its underside was a snowy white. Unlike the city's common alley cats, its ears were rounded and a shaggy ruff framed its face.

An androgynous shinobi sat between its massive paws with one arm propped casually on a bent knee, their dark hair just brushing the underside of the tiger's chin. Their eyes were a gleaming gold to match the tiger's, alert and keen despite the shinobi's relaxed pose. They looked perhaps seventeen or eighteen - younger than Shisui-sensei, but older than Itachi-sensei. They wore a fur-collared haori over a dark tank and no flak jacket, setting them firmly out of the lower caste and likely in the upper caste, and a Kiri hitai-ate with ends that trailed down their back. _Purpose: intimidation, monitoring of the city, identification of suspicious persons or behaviors._

Sai glanced around the square. The other villagers gave the tiger and the shinobi a wide berth, but the square was small and the two difficult to avoid entirely. He turned back towards the shinobi and discovered with a start that they were staring back at him, those strange eyes glimmering in the morning sun. They smiled, flashing a hint of a pointed canine. "Would you like to pet her?" they asked in a smooth voice halfway between a man and a woman's typical vocal register.

Sai hesitated, glancing over his shoulder. There was nobody there but him. He glanced back at the shinobi, who raised their eyebrow, reaching up to bury one hand in their tiger's ruff. "Don't be shy," they said, beckoning with a jerk of their chin. "I won't let her hurt you."

What would a civilian do? His time spent among civilian street children taught him that they were curious and often too bold for their own good. Sensei had told him to stay away from shinobi, but approaching this shinobi might help his cover and give him mission-relevant information. However, if the beast did indeed attempt to attack him, his cover would be well and truly blown, and he would risk exposing his team as well.

 _Course of action: maximize civilian persona, decrease reflexes. Approach the shinobi._

He took a step closer, then another. The tiger turned its head towards Sai - its first movement, and Sai froze.

The shinobi's hand drifted up to the tiger's muzzle. "Don't worry," they said, smiling encouragingly. "She's friendly, I promise. What's your name?"

Sai stopped just short of arm's reach. "I'm Itaru," he said, adding a thread of tentativeness to his voice.

The shinobi's smile widened, and Sai could see both of their upper canines were longer and pointed, like a cat's. "Nice to meet you, Itaru-kun. I am Ren, and she is called Koharu." The tiger, Koharu, blinked once, languidly, and flicked her tail. Sai hesitated, skittering backwards a step.

"No, no," Ren said reassuringly, patting at Koharu's face. The tiger heaved a gentle sigh, and shifted until she was lying down, half-curled around the shinobi. "Look," they said. "She's fine. She's not going to hurt you." They patted the tiger's ruff. "Give her a good rub, right here. She likes it."

Sai inched forward again. Tentatively, he sidled up next to Ren and crouched. Close up, Koharu dwarfed him. _Estimated weight: 320-360kg; estimated height at the shoulder: 125-130cm._ With a long-suffering sigh, the tiger dropped her head so she sprawled completely on the ground, her head resting against the stone pavers.

Sai reached out. His hand sank into Koharu's fur. "It's soft," he said, surprised.

Ren laughed. "Yeah, she is," they said, rubbing the tiger's shoulder affectionately. "Koharu's a sweetheart."

"Smells like charcoal and ink," rumbled Koharu, and Sai almost jumped out of his skin.

As it was, he suppressed his reflexes forcibly and turned his flinch into a backwards stumble, tripping over his own feet and landing on his back. He blinked up at the sky in feigned stupor. Summons and familiars often did talk, but civilians generally found it unnerving.

"Koharu!" Ren admonished, laugher in their voice. "I'm sorry, Itaru-kun. That wasn't very nice of her."

"You, uh, talk," Sai stammered, sitting upright.

Two pairs of golden eyes watched him with amusement. "She does," said Ren, and winked once, languidly. "It's a secret," they said, putting their finger to their lips.

Sai widened his eyes and nodded. "Wow," he said. He inched forward again and stroked a hand along Koharu's thick neck. His hand sank in her plush coat, and the tiger blew out a staggered huff. Sai jerked his hand back, then realized the noise was pleased.

"Charcoal and ink," Ren noted, watching him with sharp eyes that belied their relaxed recline.

"I like drawing," Sai explained, sitting back on his heels and rummaging through his pockets. He produced a handful of folded papers, smeared with charcoal dust. "Ink is expensive so I don't get to use it as much."

Koharu sneezed as Ren took the papers delicately, examining them carefully one by one. "These are nice," they said. "Who are they?"

Sai had drawn villagers on his way to the square. "I don't know," he said. "People I saw today."

"They're good," Ren said, smiling up at Sai. Sai took his drawings back with a ducked head and a smile that felt strange on his face. "So, who did that to you?" they asked conversationally.

Sai _expected response: fear, suspicion, defensiveness_ paused. "Did - did what?" he said.

"Hit you," Ren said bluntly. "Tell me," they insisted, as Koharu swung her head around to observe Sai more closely.

"Nobody," Sai said. "I fell."

"Itaru-kun," the shinobi said, their voice warm with just a hint of steel. "You move carefully, like someone kicked you in the ribs, and unless you bashed your own head against the ground four or five times, you didn't get those injuries from falling. So who did that to you?"

"Shinobi-san - " Sai said.

"Ren," the shinobi corrected patiently.

"R-Ren-san," Sai amended hesitantly. "It makes no difference. I'm an orphan, I live on the streets. Nobody will do anything whether I fall or whether someone hits me."

Ren clicked their tongue, disappointed. "They won't, if you don't say anything about it." Koharu growled a note of agreement deep in her chest.

Sai avoided their matching golden stares, concentrating on folding his drawings back into his pocket. "I have to go," he said. "I have to - I don't have lunch yet. I need to - "

"Stay," said Ren. "We won't ask, then."

Sai hesitated. Koharu shuffled back upright, leaning down to rest her head on Ren's shoulder and blink mournful eyes at Sai. "It - it won't look good, if the - if they see me spending so much time with a shinobi," Sai said apologetically.

Ren watched him, a slight downturn to their mouth. "I hoped it would be the opposite," they admitted. "Take care, Itaru-kun. Maybe we will see you around again. You're a good kid."

Sai smiled, but again it felt odd and stretched. _You don't know that._

The encounter with the strange shinobi and their tiger told him very little, except that _1) Kirigakure had shinobi to spare to post in its streets, perhaps due to recall of overseas forces; 2) Kirigakure did not trust its lower city; 3) not all of its shinobi were comfortable with the status quo_ the absolute control the Kirigakure loyalist regime desired - as well as their war effort - was more precarious than Sai previously believed.

Hinata greeted him at the door of their room with, "I don't know if that was safe, Itaru."

Sai crossed the room to her, a plastic bag of broth and another of fishcakes dangling from his hand. "You were watching," he noted, passing her the soup when she reached up.

"Aa," Hinata agreed cheerfully. "Rakushi and I agreed that one of us should watch you all the time." She smiled at Sai even as she poured the broth into their pot.

"Our resources can be better spent," Sai argued, but accepted that the arrangement might be necessary for maintenance of his teammates' mental and emotional wellbeing. Hinata's silence was politely disbelieving. "The tiger familiar was nonaggressive, and the shinobi as well." He paused. "I could not tell if the shinobi was male or female or neither. Could you?"

Hinata fumbled the empty broth bag. "J-just b-because I c-can s-see d-does not m-mean that I-I-I l-look," she said with dignity and a blush flaming red across her cheeks. "P-p-pass me the f-fishcakes."

"You must have noticed," Sai pressed. "A penis or breasts. Or neither. Or both."

Sai watched with a detached fascination as Hinata's face turned increasingly crimson. "T-t-t-that's - "

"I suppose they may identify as something other than their biological sex," he allowed, suddenly concerned that his teammate might faint. "It does not matter, then."

Gaara chose that moment to walk in. His eyes tracked slowly from Sai to Hinata and back to Sai before visibly dismissing their behavior. _Sai, stay, after, meal,_ he signed.

"I took a guard shift here yesterday," Sai pointed out, but recognized that this may be yet another attempt at protecting him.

Inevitably, Sai thought bleakly two hours later, that attempt led to this:

Three hours past noon, when Sai was in their room alone, organizing the drawings crumpled and scattered and torn by the Osore's last visit, he heard the thump of unfamiliar footsteps down their stairs once again. He closed his eyes, set his half-sorted stack of paper aside, and stood resignedly.

Today, it was _identification: Tousuzhi; alias: Tousu; age: 15; affiliation: street rat gang Osore; rank: grunt; status: civilian_ someone expected and _identification: Kotai; estimated age: 12-14; affiliation: street rat gang Osore; rank: runner; status: civilian_ someone unexpected.

Sai watched from under his eyelashes as the former swaggered into their room. "Good afternoon," Sai said politely, biting down on the unfamiliar taste _anger resentment hate?_ that burned at the back of his mouth. "Can I help you?"

Tousuzhi smiled, but those bared teeth struck Sai as particularly unfriendly. "Yeah, you can," the teen drawled, and Sai resigned himself to another afternoon of unpleasant interaction as the other moved forward to block the door.

Sai felt a familiar tug at his chakra and froze.

In the split second that he had, he weighed the mission _top priority_ against his cover _high priority_ , said, "Excuse me," and dove for his butcher paper.

Both civilians jerked back with loud cries as Sai's sumi rat hurtled through the air, impacting against the proffered paper. There was a beat of absolute silence as the ink snaked unnaturally across its untouched surface.

Sai dropped the paper.

"Witch!" spat the younger one, Kotai, stumbling backwards

"Shinobi," said Tousuzhi, sudden wariness in his eyes.

"This was not supposed to happen," Sai informed them regretfully, straightening to his full height rather than the half hunch that he adopted with Itaru's persona. They stared at him, their incredulity now tinged with fear, and Sai wondered if that cold grip at his chest was satisfaction or dread or an impending illness. He paused. "You realize I cannot allow you to leave here alive," he warned.

Tousuzhi's hand dropped to his side where his knife was strapped to his belt - a thin shiv of a fisherman's knife, not a kunai. Kouti whipped around to run.

Sai was faster. He sprang past Tousuzhi and caught Kotai by the shoulder, hurling him away from the doorway and against the far wall. Tousuzhi snarled and lunged, and Sai leaned back as the blade swiped past his face.

He seized the teen's wrist above the knife in one hand, and with the other rapped sharply on the elbow of the outstretched arm. A loud crack split the air as the joint dislocated and the teen cried out, dropping the knife. Sai snagged it from midair, giving Tousuzhi a shove as the teen stumbled away, clutching at his dangling arm. "I wish you were able to take this as a lesson," Sai lamented conversationally. "Unfortunately, this must remain between us today."

"Freak!" Tousuzhi spat, glaring at Sai from the far end of the room, pressed against the wall as though it may offer an escape.

"You were correct the first time," Sai clarified. "Shinobi." He spun the knife into a backhanded grip, easy and comfortable despite the unfamiliar weapon, and started forward.

But this felt...wrong. Sai could not understand why. The mission demanded he protect his identity at all costs, save endangering the mission.

Tousuzhi lunged, desperation and anger in the hard set of his eyes, and Sai felt his body respond instinctively, pivot on the ball of his foot and bring the blade up in a wide arch, felt the tug of resistance as the brittle knife tore through skin and flesh alike. He did not watch the body fall, only turned his face away as the blood sprayed through the air.

Movement flickered in the corner of his eye as Kotai tried to bolt once again. It was an easy matter for Sai to lash out in a low kick and send him sprawling on the ground. He landed hard, his foot slipping in the puddle slowly spreading from around Tousuzhi's still form. Sai straddled the older boy easily, pinning his arms with his knees.

There were tears in Kotai's eyes, which Sai noted clinically. Kotai's breath came in short, hard pants, too fast for optimal respiration. He must be lightheaded. "Please," gasped Kotai, the word half-sobbed as he jerked his entire body away from Sai.

Sai was shorter than Kotai and slighter as well, but even without chakra this civilian would not overpower him. "Please," Sai echoed blankly. "You understand why I must take this course of action, don't you?"

The other boy shook his head frantically, and tears tracked from the corners of his eyes. "Don't kill me, please don't kill me! I'm sorry, I won't tell anyone, I swear!" he babbled, mindless in his fear.

The uncomfortable constriction in Sai's chest increased. He must have acquired a viral infection in the preceding days. "But you would," he countered, heedless of Kotai's continued pleas. "I would, if I were in your shoes. I would find the first shinobi I could and tell them there was a rogue shinobi here."

The throat was the easiest way to kill a man - or a boy, or an animal. It boasted no bony protection, and there the blood ran close to the surface. Sai raised the blade to Kotai's throat, and the other boy stilled as its edge pressed against the point where his pulse fluttered. Sai's hands were sure and steady. Kotai's trembled and clenched.

Again the strange hesitation stilled his hand. Sai stared down curiously at the blade, as if it were the one offering him resistance.

Just as involuntarily, his hand jerked, carving open that untouched throat from ear to chin. Sai watched dispassionately as Kotai gurgled and choked. Failure could not be tolerated. Weakness must be extinguished. There was only the mission.

He turned away.

The billow of familiar sakki rammed into him as he was rescuing the last ink-rat-map that had provoked the incident to begin with from the floor. Gaara flew down the stairs and skidded into the doorway, and his killing intent vanished, quashed by shock. Belatedly, Sai looked down and realized how the room looked: Sai, a bloodied shiv in one hand and red streaked down his jacket; at his feet, two corpses sprawled carelessly, their throats weeping onto the floor; the ever-widening pool of blood threatening to soak their blankets.

Sai raised his head and met Gaara's wide eyes with his own. Both of them stared at the other with the closest either of them had come to panic.

"Help me hide the bodies before Tatsuko gets back," Sai said.

Gaara blinked dubiously. _She, see, all,_ he signed.

"Not if she wasn't looking," Sai said grimly. "Her range does not exceed two kilometers."

Gaara paused, tilting his head as he considered the macabre scene more intently. His mouth twisted into a pout. _Not, I, kill,_ he signed, accusatory.

"This was not planned," Sai said wearily. "You are still not allowed to kill anyone." He rolled his paper tightly and nudged the blankets out of the way of the blood with his foot. "Take care of the blood. It's spreading too fast."

From Sai's understanding, it took thought but not much chakra for Gaara to manipulate small amounts of sand small distances. Generally, this ability was useful for situations in which they needed to track something or for Gaara to change his appearance.

Now, it proved helpful for the jinchuuriki to unearth the little pockets of sand he had squirreled away around the factory during the nights when he stood guard by himself, in order to use that sand to soak up the blood like a particularly gritty sponge.

Sai folded their blankets up, stacking them in the furthest corner and watching out of the corner of his eye as Gaara crouched at the edge of the pool of blood, its spread curtailed by a little bank of sand. After a moment, he reached out and dipped his finger in it, then streaked the blood across his face. It glistened, wet and crimson, then slowly sank into his sand armor. Sai had thought it a strange quality when first he encountered it - but Zabuza-sensei's sword behaved much the same, and he could not deny its practical application.

But though Gaara's sand could take care of the blood, there was yet the two corpses to dispose of.

Gaara could - and quite eagerly would - simply pulverize them with his sand and absorb their remains; he had done so with a Suna Anbu just a month after they met for the first time. However, that would send up a flare large enough for even the most chakra-blind shinobi to feel from the harbor, rendering useless the pains they had taken to use their chakra sparingly throughout their mission.

They would have to take care not to leave tracks; a murder was a flashier thing than a random spike of chakra in the city, though not by much. Bodies dropped every day, but these had people who cared if they went missing.

 _Option: dispose of the corpses in one of the canals. Advantage: no blood trail; disadvantage: high probability of immediate discovery by Kiri shinobi._

 _Option: dispose of the corpses in one of the dumpsters. Advantage: unlikely to be discovered by a shinobi; disadvantage: high probability of discovery by a street orphan._

 _Option: contact Shisui-sensei for assistance. Advantage: Shisui-sensei's experience would likely contribute a more viable solution; disadvantage: endangerment to their covers._ This option felt remarkably similar to admitting defeat.

Sai glanced back down at his hands. _Available resources: himself, Gaara, Gaara's sand, one 12cm fishing knife. Insufficient to break down corpses._

He paused contemplatively. They did not need to prevent discovery - only prevent the deaths from being traced back to them. "Dumpster," he said out loud. "We need a tarp."

Gaara wrinkled his nose - not at the prospect of rotting things, but at the process of moving the bodies there. He stalked out the door.

Sai turned back to the problem of the bodies. Elbows and knees and necks were easy to sever - between the bones was only a little cartilage, and the fishing knife could manage so much. He had already begun the process in each with the killing strike.

He stepped carefully on the sand, his feet sinking in slightly as it gave under his weight. Kotai lay as Sai had left him, sprawled on his back with both legs outstretched and one bloodstained hand reaching in vain for his throat. Blood splattered his mouth and lower face, dark and nearly congealed now, and his eyes stared emptily at nothing.

Sai reached down to grip Kotai's hair, baring the red slit bisecting his throat. He looked, and he cut.

They made a strange pair, skulking through the lower city's loneliest back alleys with a bulging blanket - not theirs, but one Gaara had returned with once Sai had finished his grisly task. Sai's heart beat steadily in his throat, a warning and a reassurance in one. He did not dare cross into another district. Shinobi might overlook a lone street rat loitering near the boundary fences, but one with two torsos and corresponding heads and limbs in tow would prove too suspicious and too dangerous to ignore.

Perhaps the shinobi did not notice them, but the carrion crows did, drawn to the stench of death emanating from their burden that Sai could not shake and which Gaara did not bother trying. They perched on the eaves and watched with judgemental eyes as Sai heaved the entire thing into the dumpster and climbed in after it to cover it with refuse as best he could. "Get them away," he told Gaara over his shoulder. "They draw too much attention."

Gaara stared blankly at him for a moment before reaching down to pick up a pebble.

Hinata walked into their room that evening with her tin of money in the crook of her arm and a bag of something fried dangling from her hand. She hesitated just briefly midstep, a slight frown creasing her forehead. "It smells like blood," she said slowly.

Sai resisted the urge to look around. There was no more blood on the ground - Gaara's sand had seen to that - and what had splattered on his jacket had washed right off the water-resistant cloth; it now hung drip-drying from a rusty nail in the corner.

"My construct returned while you were gone," he said instead, laying down the final piece of the map over the inked path with deliberately careful hands, as if this were all he had done this afternoon. Some of the drawings were crumpled and torn from yesterday's ordeal, the rice paper too delicate to withstand the abuse, but the picture they formed was clear enough. He had known what the trail would show before he even began building the map over it.

His following silence alerted her to a change, and her frown deepened. "What does it show?"

"Number Four," Sai said aloud, a strange satisfaction curling in his chest. "Passway confirmed. Mission success."

Hinata smiled then - not Tatsuko's light, vapid thing or Kyuu's cold, satisfied bared teeth - but a Hinata smile, tentative and small and radiant. "Good," she said simply, and then Tatsuko's exuberance overtook her. "Good thing I have takoyaki!" she chirped. "We can celebrate."

Celebration had not occurred to Sai, but across the room where he was swaddled in blankets with his eyes half-lidded with irritation at the cold, Gaara straightened, interest sparking in the glint of his eyes. _Eight-leg-fish,_ he signed at Sai.

Another of Gaara's strange fixations. Sai suspected he liked the texture. "Yes, octopus," he said aloud. "Where did you get it?"

Hinata beamed. "Jitsuko-baachan bought it for me," she said, reminding Sai why of the three, Hinata spent the most time gathering resources on the streets. "She said I looked cold."

Sai made the requisite responses and reached for the rice _benefits: filling, provides necessary nutrients, source of energy_ , to bolster the takoyaki. Hinata made no further remark as to the scent of blood, but Sai wondered if the metallic tang he still smelled rose from Gaara's sand or his own memory.

Sai awoke when someone loomed over him. He tensed and opened his eyes, but relaxed when he recognized Gaara, crouched in front of him with a particularly intent stare. Sai raised an eyebrow in question, not willing to speak aloud with Hinata asleep at his back, the quiet rhythm of her breathing uninterrupted.

 _Out, come, now,_ Gaara signed. He paused, then repeated, _now_ with impatient insistence. Sai frowned, but Gaara did not seem unusually alarmed or agitated.

He rose, gathering his jacket around him, and followed Gaara outside. They emerged into the ruined warehouse, its wide open crumbling floors gaping into the darkness below, and more shadows still draping from the support beams stretching to the rafters. At the far wall, where the grimy cracked glass threw refracted moonlight over them, Gaara stopped and turned, expectantly. Sai halted as well and stiffened, too late.

"Hi," said Shisui-sensei. "A little bird told me you dumped two corpses in the middle of the city yesterday."

Gaara vanished abruptly back into the shadows, but Shisui-sensei's eye pinned Sai in place. He remembered, with the icy clarity of hindsight, that his sensei had called crows to be his eyes, that day when he and the other sensei tore a warship apart and pulled Team Byakko from its depths.

Shisui-sensei felt sharper today, colder, his eye trained steadily on Sai and his posture the shinobi's coiled readiness. The lighter, more eye-catching clothes of his disguise had been eschewed in favor of simple, dark clothes, more like the standard chuunin-jounin Konoha blues or Kiri greys. Sai understood: he was here as the mission commander, and had elected to endanger his cover to do so.

Something he could not identify paralyzed Sai's throat. Shisui-sensei watched him impassively. _When a commanding officer gives you an order, you obey. When a commanding officer asks you a question, you answer. When a commanding officer speaks to you, you respond._ Sai wrestled down the foreign resistance and said, with great effort, "Hai."

Sai expected the snapping anger from when Sasuke and Naruto had started a fight in Kitakyushu and brought Konoha shinobi to investigate or even the previous day, when Sai showed up to their rendezvous battered and bruised, or the cold authority he wielded when challenged by other shinobi. Instead, Shisui-sensei did not react but to say, calmly, "You should have told me."

Sai had received no orders to do so explicitly, but his pulse jumped nonetheless at the implication of orders disobeyed. "I did not want to endanger your cover," he explained. And, when Shisui-sensei did not respond, dared to venture, "Would you have directed me to do something else?"

"I assume you had a good reason for killing them," Shisui-sensei said instead, tipping his head slightly to eye Sai more keenly.

"A Passway," Sai said, relieved to finally have a correct answer. "One of my scouts returned at an unfortunate moment, and I was forced to reveal myself or risk its self-destruction." He chanced a glance sideways at Shisui-sensei, but his face was still blank.

And then, perhaps the most jarring part of their encounter, Shisui-sensei said, "Okay."

It was a neutral response, when Sai expected either positive for preserving the mission or negative for endangering their covers. "Okay?" he parroted, before he could stop himself.

"You made the best decision you could given the information and resources you had," Shisui-sensei agreed.

It occurred to Sai that Shisui-sensei had perhaps not come to reprimand him. He stood in silence, confused, and not quite sure what to do with that information.

Shisui-sensei lifted his chin a little, no longer looking directly at Sai. "To take a life is no small thing; killing a person outside the battlefield, someone is not your enemy - that will weigh on you. On your soul."

A soul? Surely shinobi did not have the luxury to think of such abstract things. "Weren't they our enemies?" he asked instead.

"They were civilians," Shisui-sensei said, not precisely answering him. "Children. They had no quarrel in shinobi matters."

Sai had, in fact, registered these two facts, but Shisui-sensei's tone prompted him to _classify 'civilian children' as: do not kill_ redefine his value of 'enemy.'

"Sai," Shisui-sensei said, and he jolted at hearing his name instead of his cover's. "I just wanted to make sure you're okay."

"Yes," Sai said automatically, confused. "I am well."

Shisui-sensei frowned then, and Sai suspected that this had not been the answer his sensei had been looking for. "Avoid killing in the future," Shisui-sensei added, the shadows beneath his brows deepening a little, "especially on undercover reconnaissance. It complicates things." He fell silent again, but Sai sensed that this particular conversation would continue at a later date. "The scout," Shisui-sensei said after a moment. "Did it find anything?"

"Yes," said Sai, the pinch in his back lessening at the return to more familiar territory, then paused, unsure if describing the smuggling Passway's route was the most efficient method of delivery. "I can show you," he offered. "The map is in our room."

Shisui-sensei hummed approvingly. "Good work," he said warmly. "Lead the way."

Gaara lurked at the top of the stairs, watching silently with luminous eyes as Shisui-sensei followed Sai towards their room. Sai tilted his head questioningly but Gaara ignored him, so he moved on to the steps. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Shisui-sensei reach out to ruffle Gaara's hair affectionately, and the jinchuuriki leaned into his hand, eyes half closing at the touch.

Hinata's form, barely visible in the moonlight streaming past their torn curtain, was still and quiet. Sai padded across the floor to the crate with his drawings. Shisui-sensei ghosted in after him, watching still and patient with a red-whirling eye as Sai fit the drawings over the ink trail.

A dull boom shook the walls; the papers jerked from his hands involuntarily as the ground rumbled. The slow wail of a siren split the air, and Hinata bolted upright even as Sai flinched, jerking into a defensive crouch. "What was that?" she demanded, and then snapped her head around to stare at Shisui-sensei. Her Byakugan must have activated spontaneously in her alarm. "Captain?"

Kyuu was the only persona - and only one of the pack - who called Shisui-sensei by his rank.

A higher, faster siren joined the first, followed by the rumble of distant explosions. "The siege," Shisui-sensei said, faintly bemused, striding back towards the stairs. "They've started the invasion."

Even so far from the port, the sounds of distant battle carried faintly on the wind. Gaara was already back at the window, perched precariously on the narrow sill as he peered through the fractured glass. As they watched, in a tight cluster before the window, a crackle of lightning illuminated the rooftops, and the ground trembled beneath their feet.

Sai's life could be divided into several different distinct periods, always with a clear turning point: the Fall, leaving San's forest, leaving Kitakyushu, and so on. This, he sensed, as the light of a katon dispelled the night for just a moment, was the beginning of the end of one such period.

Shisui-sensei blew out a short breath, a nearly soundless huff drowned out by the distant clash outside. "Your mission is different now," he said, swivelling to fix each member of Sai's team with a keen stare. "From now on, your assignment is to stay hidden, retrieve intel from your scouts and wait for extraction."

"Our mission is over?" Hinata clarified, the blindfold twitching a little as she narrowed her eyes. "And we are just waiting for the Hanran and Hana-ha to reach us."

"Aa. It's going to take some time for our forces to push through the streets. Don't be seen," Shisui-sensei instructed, his voice grim. "Osore knows to come here to find you; don't be here. You don't play that game anymore. And don't do anything that will attract attention from any shinobi, our side or theirs."

No one could see what Hinata was looking at, since with her doujutsu active she could see all, but Sai was fairly confident that she was staring at him. Gaara's eyes drifted gradually to Sai's face, rested there for a split second, then moved slowly back out the window. Sai, for his part, had not taken his eyes off Shisui-sensei's face.

Shisui-sensei paused. "I guess one of you had to be the troublemaker," he said wryly. "What did you do?"

The back of Sai's neck prickled uncomfortably. _Troublemaker. Rebellious. Disobedient. Unacceptable._ "I did speak to a shinobi yesterday," he admitted, "in the interest of gathering information. I learned nothing new."

"Hm," Shisui-sensei said. "Well, from here on out, just stay out of sight." A particularly loud explosion rattled the glass panes, and Gaara hopped off the sill awkwardly, landing in a low crouch. "I need to get back before someone sees me so far out," Shisui-sensei said, casting a fleeting glance out the window. "Stay safe. I mean it."

And then he was gone.

Navigating the lower city post-invasion required a significantly higher level of discretion. Morning dawned. The battle at the port had settled, but the city hovered in a watchful state.

"Most civilians are staying indoors," Hinata reported, otherwise preternaturally still. "Kiri is sending teams through the city in the sewers." She paused, her mouth twisting into an annoyed scowl. "They are putting up seals in the walls that I can't see through."

Sai recalled the entry in Etsuji's bingo book for Byakugangoroshi Ao; no doubt these efforts were for him. However, the shinobi forces were not his team's main obstacle. "And Osore?" Sai prompted.

Hinata's lips curled even as she remained quiet, searching. "Cockroaches are not concerned with the wars of men," she said at last.

Well, no, Sai assumed they would not be. "What about Osore?" he asked again.

Hinata tilted her head a little. "Its members seem to be resuming normal activities, more or less," she said evenly.

"Pack the room," Sai directed grimly. "If the pattern continues, Osore will send more here today."

Hinata paused, and Sai was suddenly cognizant of his mistake. Speaking would not help his situation, so he said nothing as Hinata swivelled slowly to face him. "They sent members yesterday," she stated more than asked.

"Yes," Sai conceded, accepting where this line of questioning would lead with some regret.

Hinata looked him up and down, comparing his condition to that of the previous day and no doubt mentally tallying the coins in their possession. "What did you do to them?"

Sai glanced at Gaara. The jinchuuriki stared back blankly, with the air of one watching a particularly engrossing sparring match. "I killed them," Sai answered. "We dumped their bodies in the middle of the city. It is the reason Sensei came to check on us in person."

Hinata absorbed the information silently. "Were you planning on telling me?" she asked, the slight edge of menace she always exuded with the Kyuu persona spiking.

"No," Sai admitted.

"I see," said Hinata, and turned away.

Sai exchanged a glance with Gaara and went to collect his drawings.

Hinata must have deactivated her doujutsu, because Sai was alerted to the forewarned visit by syndicate representatives not by her, but by Gaara's head, jerked up as one of his proximity alarms _buried sand_ was triggered. _Two,_ Gaara signed, and then something rude that he probably meant to mean Osore.

"Osore is here," Sai said, for Hinata's benefit. "We need to leave. Immediately." He grabbed the bundle of drawings, bundled it all in his jacket, and bolted for the stairs.

There wasn't time to run. The warehouse was large and open, and once someone entered they could see more or less everything from front to back. Sai risked the chakra to lend him the strength to leap straight up, into the rafters. Twin pulses behind him alerted him to Hinata and Gaara alighting behind him, balanced on the narrow wooden beam.

As soon as Gaara's feet touched the beam, the familiar silhouette of Shijima stepped through the bare doorframe at the far end of the warehouse, shadowed by another unfamiliar teen.

Sai should have expected him, Shijima who harassed him most frequently of all Osore, Shijima who had assaulted him with all the cold efficiency of a shinobi. Sai could not help but _classify Shijima as: enemy_ think of him as a threat despite his civilian status.

Perhaps Gaara registered the tension in the way Sai tracked the teen's progress along the open floor. Perhaps Gaara recognized that Shijima had been the one to visit most often, even when Gaara himself was not around. In either case, Gaara quickly concluded that Shijima was responsible for Sai's suboptimal condition and his eyes narrowed murderously; though his sakki did not spike at all, his intent was quite clear. He closed his eyes, and below Sai could see the wisps of sand coalescing behind the Osore members.

Gaara did not need to close his eyes to concentrate. He closed his eyes so that he could not see Sai when he signed sharply at the jinchuuriki to _stop._

Hinata, crouched between them, did not move to either help or hinder, even as Sai's gestures sharpened insistently. Sai did not know if she was still displeased with him for concealing his elimination of the two Osore the day before, if she, like Gaara, wanted revenge on his behalf, or even if she had her doujutsu deactivated and simply could not see him. _Mission. Stop._ None of his signing helped if Gaara was not looking.

He glanced down. Shijima and his companion did not look up, as many civilians did not, nor were they aware of the danger rising behind them. Sai coiled and leapt, flipping neatly over both Hinata and Gaara and landing precisely on Gaara's far side on soundless feet. Gaara jerked, eyes opening instinctively, and Sai signed _sand, stop,_ right in front of his face so he could not avoid it.

Gaara's face twisted into a snarl, and far below his sand fell back to the ground with a muted hiss. This caught the civilians' attention, and both whirled. Sai's team remained frozen in the shadows overhead. The teen with Shijima took a few wary steps forward, but there was nothing to see.

"Come on. It was just the wind," said Shijima after a few tense seconds, turning again to lead the way down to their recently vacated room.

Sai took the opportunity to lean forward and whisper, _"No killing."_

Gaara scowled back at him unrepentantly. Hinata, who had swivelled so she was facing in Gaara and Sai's general direction, made no indication that she had heard.

Sai paused and added, "No maiming. No injuring. Do not make - " _contact_ was cut off by a loud crash and reemergence of Shijima, his face unruffled as ever but with a line of fury in his shoulders that one without training could not hope to conceal.

"They might come back," his companion said, hurrying after Shijima as he stormed up the stairs.

Shijima turned on him. "The boy's drawings are gone. They took their cooking supplies and at least one blanket," he snapped. "They're not coming back." The other boy, though broader in shoulder and taller than Shijima, was cowed into silence. "Have some of the runners keep checking anyways," Shijima said dismissively, striding towards the door, his voice fading as he went. "We'll find them in the streets. There's nowhere they can hide in Osore territory."

That was a challenge Sai was willing to meet.

 _Kill,_ Gaara signed grumpily.

"Sensei said no," Sai reminded. This team had no greater deterrent than _Sensei said no._

Living in hiding proved far less stressful than attempting to maintain a civilian persona. The three of them all moved in one group, passing like ghosts through the back alleys even as the ground beneath their feet rumbled from the echoes of the battle at the port.

It also did not last very long.

"Hi!" said _identification: Uzumaki Naruto; designation: Allied Target 4, designation: AT4; status: Kyuubi jinchuuriki; affiliation: Hanabi-ha; affiliation: Yorozoku "pack" Team Byakko; codename: Hana-Shi-006; rank: genin; alias: Roku_ Naruto brightly, the greeting muffled slightly by his mask.

"Should you be here?" Sai asked. Sasuke _identification: Uchiha Sasuke; designation: Allied Target 3, designation: AT3; affiliation: Hanabi-ha; affiliation: Yorozoku "pack" Team Byakko; codename: Hana-Shi-004; rank: genin; alias: Shi_ slunk out of the shadows next to his teammate, his posture tense and shifty.

"We're your expression," the blond informed him, glancing around inquisitively. "What happened to your face? This place is kind of a dump, isn't it?"

"Extraction," Sakura _identification: Haruno Sakura; designation: Allied Noncombatant Haruno Sakura, designation: ANHS; affiliation: Hanabi-ha; affiliation: Yorozoku "pack" Team Byakko; codename: Hana-Shi-005; rank: genin; alias: Go; alias: Go-go_ corrected, crouching in front of the crawlspace and peering in, blocking their light. "It's not that bad." She paused, eyeing Sai critically. "Your eye doesn't look too good though."

"Give us space," said Sai, and Sakura moved back to let him slither his way out. The sun was setting, sending orange rays spinning across the lower city.

"Sensei's keeping like three teams under a genjutsu so we gotta hurry," Naruto piped up as Sai leaned back to give Hinata a supporting hand. "We gotta get back before the sun sets."

"W-what about J-Juu-sensei?" Hinata asked, moving to the side. Gaara squirmed out behind her, his sand armor flaking off the excess sand until the shape of his face returned to normal.

Naruto, predictably, was thrilled by the display. "That is _so_ cool," he enthused, poking at Gaara's face. Gaara allowed the intrusion, blinking owlishly at Naruto with only a slight narrowing of his eyes.

"Give them the stuff, idiot," Sasuke prompted, nudging his teammate with his shoulder. "Aniki sent him a crow, he'll know to get out."

'The stuff' was their Yorozoku masks. "The cloaks were too big," Naruto said apologetically, shifting so his own sat more comfortably on his shoulders, and passing around kunai holsters. He had Hinata's hiogi fans and Sai's tanto as well. Sai took his tanto with relief, eager to have his blade close at hand one more, and shrugged the sheath over his head.

"Someone's coming," Sakura warned, jerking her head back from the corner of the alley and taking quick steps back towards the clustered group.

Hinata's smile edged into Kyuu's cool smirk as she unwrapped the bandages around her eyes, the doujutsu bulging the veins at their corners. "This one is fine," she said. "Civilian. Harmless. There's no need to hide our identities from him." She slid her mask down just over her eyes.

Sai paused suspiciously. Gaara exuded an air of smugness as he tucked the mask over his face. "Kyuu," Sai began warningly as he strapped on his holster.

A sharp intake of breath from the alley mouth. Sai and Naruto glanced over reflexively. The rest did not. Sai met Shijima's eyes with resignation and no small amount of satisfaction at the teen's obvious confusion and alarm at the sight of Sai standing unafraid with five masked figures. His gaze dropped to Sai's kunai holster before looking back up. Without breaking eye contact, Sai folded his hands into the dog-boar-ram signs and threw up a henge, hiding his injuries from sight, and Shijima's eyes went wide.

Gaara gestured out of the corner of his eyes. "No killing civilians," Sai repeated, for perhaps the sixth or seventh time in the past two days, and Shijima's fear spiked the pulse fluttering in his neck.

"You didn't hold back three days ago," Hinata pointed out in a carrying murmur, and spun one of her hiogi through her fingers purely to observe Shijima's reaction.

"Oh, damn," Naruto muttered, watching the blood drain from the teen's face with interest and a tilted head. "What'd he do to you?"

Sai was not feuding with a civilian. Sai was a shinobi completing a mission. He hooked his mask over his face and dropped the henge, the smooth porcelain familiar despite the way it pressed uncomfortably against the swelling around his eye and mouth. "Move out," he ordered, and sprang up the building wall.

Gaara followed with a menacing rattle of sand, and the others darted up after. Even Naruto seemed to understand that there was something bigger at play, because he too followed without even a token protest though Sai technically could not be in charge of his own extraction.

At the top of the building, Sasuke took the lead, shouldering past Naruto to hurl himself off the roof's edge to the next sloping roof. They crossed two more roofs, then dropped down to street level.

"Wait," Hinata warned, as Sasuke slid towards the main street, and Sai pressed himself against the wall as Sakura crowded in next to him. Footsteps, shinobi-light, darted past their alley and vanished. "Go," said Hinata. They went.

"What's the status on the invasion?" Sai asked Sakura in an undertone as they crossed into the adjacent alley and hopped the chain link at the far end, one by one.

"We have a good number of our forces on the shore," Sakura answered. "Two more of their ships are in the harbor, neutralized. They're not sure where the other four are. We don't think Kiri will fight too hard to keep the lower city. Zabuza-sensei says they don't have enough shinobi for that, now that we've made it this far."

At the next corner, Sasuke stopped above a covered sewer and crouched, heaving the metal grate off and to the side. Sai had spent the greater part of the month avoiding running water where at all possible and did not move but to glance into the street warily. "Come on," Sasuke said with a scowl when none of them moved.

Hinata hesitated. "I can't see down there," she said, her mouth a grim slash across her face.

"The secrecy seals," Sasuke said, unsurprised. "We know. Ni said."

"Karasu-sensei's holding it clear for us," Sakura said reassuringly. "It'll be fine."

Sai was not reassured, but nodded anyways when Hinata glanced at him. He drew his tanto, holding it flat against his forearm and dropped into the darkness.

He landed knee deep in water before he caught himself and buoyed back to the surface, having misjudged the distance in the dim lighting. He moved out of the way so the others could join him, glancing up and down the tunnel curiously. The walls were slick and lined with moss. Every ten meters, an electric lamp bolted to the wall spilled a tiny pool of yellow light across the water. The overwhelming stench of feces and damp immediately assaulted him, and he took shallow breaths beneath the mask.

Sakura landed soundlessly behind him, followed by Hinata, then Naruto with a splash that echoed down the tunnel. Sakura winced and turned, accusatory, on Naruto; Naruto rubbed his hair sheepishly in apology. Gaara dropped down behind them with a discontented snort at the smell, and then Sasuke after replacing the grate cover with a dull clunk.

"Can you see anything now?" Sasuke directed at Hinata, angling back to squint into the gloom.

Hinata made a displeased noise. "Only as far as the next seal."

"Hn. It's whatever," Sasuke said, shrugging a shoulder indifferently.

"This way," Sakura prompted, and darted down the tunnel in the direction of the current.

Another tunnel converged on theirs after a few minutes, and then another, and then it diverged. Sakura chose the left side tunnel without hesitation, but Hinata's step faltered as she flinched.

"What?" Sasuke demanded, as Sai raised his blade warily.

Hinata shook her head. "Seals overlapping," she said, nodding at the ink spiderwebbing the walls. "They were brighter than I expected. This is a double blind box."

Sakura looked up and shivered. "The sooner we get out of here, the better."

They moved on.

The next fork brought a more welcome sight. "Hey, kids," Shisui-sensei said breezily from behind his leopard-spotted mask. "So far so good?"

"Juu-sensei!" Sakura said in surprise. Naruto shot forward to tackle him into a hug.

Shisui-sensei sidestepped neatly and plucked Naruto out of the air by the back of his collar. "Not to scare you guys too much, but there's a team coming down this tunnel," he said, depositing Naruto gently back on his feet. "Let's go."

The knowledge of pursuit quickened their steps and the pulse in Sai's throat, but Shisui-sensei was a reassuring presence in their midst. The lights blurred past. The tunnel widened and curved sharply.

Shisui-sensei rounded the corner and swerved, hooking Sakura safely to the side with one arm, and Naruto, who kept sprinting, crashed straight into a Kiri shinobi. "Shit, these seals, am I right?" Shisui panted, throwing out his free arm to keep the others from following suit. "Can't sense worth a damn in here."

"Another double blind box," Hinata murmured under her breath, stopping short behind Sai.

Naruto skittered backwards from the shinobi he'd bowled over, who'd swiped at him halfheartedly with a kunai.

"What the fuck," said one of the shinobi. Eight of them - two teams - clustered at the fork, staring at them with a mixture of irritation and suspicion.

"We're just on our way out. Don't mind us," said Shisui-sensei, waving a hand backwards at Sai's team. Sai took the hint and sidled along the wall, Gaara on his heels.

"Hold it," snapped a kunoichi, unsheathing the katana slung over her back. "Who the hell are you?" Her team adjusted slightly, angling themselves behind her, and after half a moment's hesitation, the other team mirrored them.

Had Shisui-sensei not been wearing a distinctly Konohan Anbu mask, and the rest of the pack members not been wearing distinctly non-Anbu bone masks, they might have gotten away without attracting further notice. As it was, their masks were designed to hide their faces, but not their affiliations.

"Naohiro," Shisui answered anyways, his posture still loose and relaxed despite his suddenly steely voice. "Jounin. As you were." Sakura slipped behind him discreetly.

"Hey, traitor," growled another shinobi, the apparent leader of the second team, taking a threatening step forward and unsheathing his own sword. "She said, 'hold it.'"

"Oh, shit," said Shisui-sensei. "We surrender!"

The eight Kiri shinobi all paused to stare. The kunoichi leader's katana dipped slightly.

Naruto swiveled his head to glare at him reproachfully.

"I mean," said Shisui-sensei, "you do have a surrender policy, right?"

Considering Kiri's particularly brutal warrior culture and fixation on honor, Sai would not be surprised if they did not. Two of the shinobi exchanged uncertain glances. The lead kunoichi continued to watch Shisui-sensei with narrowed eyes.

"Sorry, sorry." Shisui-sensei held up both hands placatingly. "That's probably not fair to you. Can we, uh, can we un-surrender?"

The remaining shinobi drew their swords as one and froze.

Sai paused warily. Gaara's head tilted. Sasuke's hand hovered uncertainly over the hilt of his katana.

"That's your cue, kids," said Shisui-sensei, his voice strained. "Go, go, go."

Sai took the lead, breaking into a sprint down the sewer, and was quickly overtaken by Naruto, who saw everything - even running from the enemy - as a competition. Behind them, metal clashed on metal in echoing screeches as the shinobi tore their way free of Shisui-sensei's genjutsu. Sai eyed Naruto to make sure he wouldn't attempt to run back to assist.

Naruto, in a rare moment of awareness, said, "Juu-sensei's got this! He's totally badass." He gave Sai a thumbs up.

"Shut up and run, usuratonkachi," Sasuke muttered out of the side of his mouth as he sped past them both.

Predictably, Naruto made a noise similar to a boiling kettle and shot forward.

"Almost there," panted Sakura, whose stamina still lagged noticeably behind that of her teammates.

"I see Karasu-sensei ahead," Hinata said, her voice steady despite their breakneck pace. "And twenty enemy shinobi."

Sakura huffed in surprise, and Naruto blurted, "Twenty?"

"They are -" Hinata hesitated, an odd break in Kyuu's persona, and Gaara's mask tilted slightly towards her from the group's flank. "They are not an active threat to us," she finished at last, still with a strange inflection in her voice.

Sai pondered her reaction even as the lights blurred together at the speed of his passing. He did not distrust her words; she of all the pack was most likely to overestimate rather than underestimate an enemy's abilities.

His yet unformed question was abruptly answered when they rounded a bend in the tunnel and promptly encountered the backs of a team of Kiri shinobi.

They were _number: 20; affiliation: loyalist Kirigakure; in possession of an unsheathed blade: 12; in possession of a sheathed blade: 3; in motion: 0_ completely still, frozen in various stages of lunging at the lone figure in their epicenter _identification: Uchiha Itachi; affiliation: Hanabi-ha; codename: Hana-An-141; rank: captain; alias: Karasu-sensei; status: presumed extraction mission leader._ Itachi-sensei stood placidly with his hands at his side, but his projected ease was marred by the crimson glow of his doujutsu through the eyeholes of his mask, the tomoe in his eyes blurring into rings of black.

As he watched, a shinobi at the edge shook off the presumed genjutsu with a snarl, drawing his sword back and taking a step forward. Itachi-sensei transferred his gaze to the errant shinobi and the other nin froze once again. The formation of the shinobi - staggered in a layered circle converging on Itachi-sensei - became startlingly clear. The closest to him was a kunoichi with a pair of wakizashi in her hands, half-lunged barely a meter away, the furthest just abreast of Sai with his hand hovering over his kunai holster.

"Whoa," said Naruto, audibly impressed. "How many genjutsu do you got going?"

Itachi's brow furrowed, and a full three seconds passed before he managed to say, "Not the time, Roku," in an even voice. A shinobi at his back shifted, and he swivelled abruptly to forestall the man's movements.

"We can help," said Sasuke, his tone just a little shrill to betray his anxiety. Sai agreed; a killing blow to a motionless shinobi would require little effort on their part.

The amount of concentration necessary to keep twenty enemy shinobi subdued in what must have been uniquely tailored genjutsu - yet leave their chakra control untouched enough that they remain balanced on the water's surface - should have been staggering. "No," said Itachi-sensei nonetheless, and the kunoichi closest to him made another half-step before he switched his stare back to her. "Go," he ordered.

"Go," Sai prompted, nudging Naruto in the back when the jinchuuriki didn't move. "We are distracting him," he added, when he and Sasuke both hesitated.

They went.

The sewer emerged to a grate facing the sea not a hundred meters past where they left Itachi-sensei. The massive grate had been shoved aside, but from the gouges and scorch marks in the tunnel at the entrance, it had not gone easily. Sunset spilled golden hues across the tops of the waves, twinkling as it bounced off the water and also the ice mirrors, one at the ocean level a dozen meters from the sewer, another hanging ten meters midair.

"Finally," growled Zabuza-sensei, giving them an unimpressed once-over with his arms crossed over his chest. "Those morons keep taking potshots at Haku." As he spoke, something small and metallic whistled overhead and collided with the higher ice mirror with a loud explosion and accompanying fireball. Zabuza-sensei snorted dismissively.

Gaara made a beeline for Temari, who leaned against her folded tessen next to Zabuza-sensei. She lifted her arm to let him tuck himself against her side and ruffled his hair affectionately despite whatever crawlspace- or sewer-refuse clung there. "Hey," she said. "Welcome back." The second part she directed at Sai and Hinata.

"Karasu-sensei's fighting like twenty shinobi, d'you think he needs help?" Naruto piped up as Sai took deep breaths of the fresh air.

"Nah." Zabuza-sensei jerked his head at Neji, half-hidden behind his much larger bulk. "Punk here says he's good. The other one's fine too. They're on their way." He whistled sharply, and Haku stepped out of the bottom mirror just as another kunai with an exploding tag trailing from its hilt crashed into the crumbling upper one, sending shards of ice sprinkling down on their heads.

"They are quite persistent," Haku said. Slivers of ice sparkled in his hair. "It's good to see you three again," he added warmly.

"You're back, who cares, save that shit for when we get back to base," Zabuza-sensei growled. "Let's move." He turned, and without checking to see if they followed, stalked back towards the looming ships docked further out in the harbor. "Hey!" he barked, and Sai lurched reflexively before he realized Zabuza-sensei wasn't talking to them. "Get your teams back in there."

Seven figures blurred past them in shunshins. The eighth paused in front of Zabuza-sensei long enough to say "We'll take it from here, sir."

"Once those two get out of there, seal it and trap it again, all the bells and shit," Zabuza-sensei ordered, and the team leader nodded sharply before rejoining his teammates.

"Where are we going?" Hinata asked.

Small clusters of shinobi littered the shoreline; makeshift camps with fires and tents had sprung up every dozen meters or so. A larger camp appeared to have been pitched around the lighthouse, but Zabuza-sensei had angled them towards the harbor mouth instead.

Zabuza-sensei grunted. "The Hoteimaru," he said, clear distaste in his tone. "Got a mobile command center there that won't run up on the lava harpy's. Trying to keep you brats out of sight."

Zabuza-sensei was still not wearing his distinctive Kubikiribocho, just the standard Anbu katana slung over his nondescript hunter-nin uniform. Sai weighed the costs and benefits and elected not to ask if Zabuza-sensei himself was attempting to keep out of sight as best he could.

As they approached, Sai realized - though he had only seen the Jurojinmaru from a distance and for no more than twenty minutes before it met its inglorious end at the hands of the sensei and Team Suzaku, plus Gaara - that the Hoteimaru dwarfed even that hulking warship by a significant margin. He exchanged a glanced with Hinata, who had evidently drawn the same conclusion. "How were you able to capture the ship intact?" Sai asked.

Zabuza grinned, baring sharp teeth. "Not so hard when the guys on the bottom deck decide they're not down for the Mizukage's shit anymore. Command crew was sandwiched between them and us. Fuckin' over before a real battle could start."

"Karasu-sensei helped!" Naruto chirped. "I think he did his genjutsu thing cuz the other shinobi froze like they did in the tunnel but not with ice even though some _did_ freeze with ice cuz Ichi - "

"Cool story, no one cares," Zabuza interrupted. "Shut your trap, we're here."

Naruto vibrated impotently with indignation. Sasuke leapt unhesitatingly for the ship's side after Zabuza-sensei, but Sakura drew in a sharp, shaky breath.

Sai eyed her discreetly at the odd reaction, and at the other end of the group, Neji's head turned like one of the captain's dogs on a scent, but in the next heartbeat she was chasing after her teammate. Neji's eyes found his instead and for a moment they both stood still, trading unspoken questions as their teammates departed without them. Neji twitched his shoulder in a silent shrug and Sai turned away.

The Hoteimaru's deck was packed. Shinobi lay supine in small clusters with arms thrown over their heads to ward away the light or curled in tightly on themselves to shield from the cold. Some were tangled in the rigging, watchful, and others sat among their slumbering brethren with keen eyes and blades in easy reach. These shinobi wore no hitai-ate - Hanabi-ha, not Kiri Hanran, who still wore theirs with the Mist symbol unscored, as Zabuza-sensei used to.

Zabuza-sensei strode his way in the midst of all this carelessly but for a shinobi's soundless prowl, the pack trailing at his heels singly or in twos. Their immature statures and unconventional bone masks drew wary and assessing eyes. At the back of the line, Sai watched the reactions of those who watched: some blank faces, some furrowed brows, some with tensed necks and tensed arms, some with a deliberate languidness. Sai filed the faces away for later review. Zabuza-sensei shoved his way into the front cabin after a cursory knock and flaring of his chakra.

The inside of the cabin was brightly lit, electric lights strung from the walls and lanterns dangling from the low rafters. A second glance revealed the cabin had not gone unscathed from ship takeover - the scorched floor, the bucket of broken glass in the corner, the splintered chairs at the side of the room, the gouges in the floor and walls.

The captain was standing behind the table at the far end of the room, his mask shoved up on the top of his head. He looked up at their entrance. Shizune-sensei was at his side, arms crossed over her bulky grey flak jacket.

Sai hesitated, because at Shizune's other side, a man Sai did not recognize leaned against the table, scrubbing a hand over his face. Like Shizune, he wore a jounin flak jacket and no hitai-ate, but like the captain, had a dark red band wrapped around his right bicep.

Sai did not have sufficient information on the command structure of Hanabi-ha and had assumed, from the sheer scarcity, that the captain was the only commander, yet here must be a second.

"Team Genbu, welcome back," said the captain, as Hinata stalled by the door and Gaara jerked backwards into Temari's chest. "Come in and close the door."

"He knows who you are, it's fine, he probably has a bigger price on his head than you do," Zabuza-sensei drawled impatiently, so Hinata let Neji shut the doors behind them with a soft click.

"This is Commander Nara Shikaku," the captain said, jerking his head at the man on the far side of the table. "Shikaku, meet Gaara, Hinata, and Sai."

The commander dragged his hand down his face one last time and tilted his face up to assess them with surprisingly sharp eyes. "Team Genbu, a pleasure," he said dryly. "You've been in the field a while." His gaze drifted past them, to Zabuza-sensei standing solidly next to the door with arms crossed carelessly. "Where's your sensei?"

"On his way," Zabuza-sensei answered for them. "You know the assassin twins. Always picking fights."

There was not any part of that assessment that Sai agreed with. "Hmph," said the commander, unimpressed.

The captain glanced over, a flash of amusement in his normally grim eye. "It's been a long mission. Temari, take them down. Get them food and bunks."

"Hai," said Temari, and jerked her head back towards the door.

Sai hesitated. "Our report?" he asked.

"Give it to Shisui," the captain said. "He'll collate it into his. It's going to need review by both us and the Hanran. There's no need for your team to get involved in that." The commander grunted agreement beside him.

"Hai," said Sai, and joined the general shuffle of pack out the door.

"Man, that blows," Naruto said, bumping his shoulder deliberately into Sai as he trailed him through the doorway.

"What does?" Sai asked blankly.

"You did all that work and they're just going to get Shi - Juu-sensei to give them the info?" Naruto craned around to peer at him incredulously. "That don't bother you at all?"

"No." The captain had given an instruction that would increase the efficiency of intelligence collection, and Shisui-sensei had received all their reports already.

Naruto squinted at him. "You really don't mind," he said, something like awe in his voice.

"No?" The answer came out slightly more tentative than he expected. Sai did not understand what there was to mind.

Naruto puffed up in apparent righteous indignation on Sai's behalf. Sakura hooked the back of his collar expertly as he squawked. "It's the _captain,_ he knows what Hachi and his team did, he's _gonna_ give them credit," she said, and even with her mask Sai could tell she was rolling her eyes. "Stop making a fuss and calm down, you're supposed to be a ninja. This way, Hachi," she said over her shoulder.

She turned back around and nearly crashed into Shisui-sensei, who looked none the worse for his skirmishes in the sewers. "Hi," he said. "Fancy meeting you here."

"Oh!" said Sakura. "Uh, S -uh, sensei. We were just, uh - "

"We're showing Hachi where the food is!" Naruto interjected helpfully. "Wanna come? Ouch, Go-go-chan," he complained when she released his shirt and stepped on his foot instead.

"A tempting offer," Shisui-sensei said, amused. "I did work up a bit of an appetite just now."

At his side, Itachi loomed disapprovingly. "The commander requires your report," he said.

Shisui snapped off a crisp salute that made Itachi radiate exasperation and Sakura stifle a giggle. "I've been summoned. Operative Go," he intoned. "Operative Roku, Operative Hachi."

Naruto managed to hold his tongue until the three had caught up with the rest of the pack. "Karasu-sensei is _super cool,"_ he enthused.

"Yeah, so?" Sasuke could not quite hide his smugness.

"I think all the sensei are pretty cool," Temari said absently as she rummaged through the cabinets of the cramped kitchenette.

"Yeah, but you shoulda seen it earlier. I mean, it's super cool that Karasu-sensei can take on twenty shinobi and not have to even touch them," Naruto said, oblivious. "Ha! They must be super embarrassed."

Sai had caught a glimpse of Itachi-sensei's light grey fingerless gloves - the end of the left one, near the elbow, had been splattered in red. It was most likely not Itachi-sensei's blood; the enemy nin were likely too busy being dead to be embarrassed. He opened his mouth.

Hinata was looking at him. She shook her head minutely.

Sai said instead, "Yes, I imagine they are."

Temari came up triumphantly with a battered copper pot. "What do you think about miso, you guys? There's some salted dry meat and rice we can put in it."

"Yes. Thank you," said Sai for his team.

"Salted dried meat?" Sasuke knocked his mask to the top of his head and wrinkled his nose. He was the last, aside from Sai, who tugged his mask off as well.

"Not for you, you already ate," Temari dismissed. "Haku?"

Haku reached over and hovered his hand over the pot. When he took it away, the pot was half-full of water. "How did you find the city?" he asked, as Temari took back the pot and commenced cursing at the stove under her breath. "I realize some of it is not very pleasant, but Zabuza-san took me to some of the food stalls, when we lived there."

"Y-you lived in t-the L-Lower C-City?" Hinata asked, surprised.

"I did," Haku said, his voice turning wistful. "Zabuza-san was prestigious enough to afford to move out of the barracks in the Village, but he did not like the thought of living so close to some of the other shinobi. He and I - " he hesitated, a wry tilt to his mouth. "Neither of us were particularly well-liked, and Kiri shinobi will take any opening to remove a competitor from the board, even if it's another Kiri nin. And I rather think he enjoyed making the messengers the Mizukage sent lose their way. There used to be a sukiyaki restaurant near the central port square," he added after a thoughtful pause. "Did you by chance see if it was still there?"

The central port square, where they strung up a man they say harbored a traitor. Sai sifted through the memory. "Yes, it is still there," he said, and Haku smiled, soft and pleased.

"Well, this is no sukiyaki," Temari said, "but give me twenty minutes and it'll be dinner."

Sai's stomach felt hollow, and his limbs weak after the month of insufficient nutrition and past hour of intensive exertion, but here in the creaking wooden bowels of a warship only recently the enemy's the back of his neck did not prickle with warnings of observers unseen. "Thank you," he said, and meant it.

In the room the pack shared below the cabin the captain called command room and which he shared with the sensei when it came time to sleep, Sai lay awake in his gently swinging hammock and stared up at Hinata's. There were nine of them in a room meant to hold a snug four, but after a month in the lower city the emptiness at his side wore at the edges of his mind. Above him and next to Hinata, Naruto's breathing had already deepened into something he insisted was not snoring, but if so was very close to it. Below, Sasuke lay still, curled into the folds of his cloak and hammock with his chest rising and falling evenly. Sai slid his eyes to the side, where Sakura lay, and was startled to see luminous green eyes staring back at him. He did not know what to say, if anything, if he could even speak without waking the rest of the pack. After a moment, Sakura let out a nearly noiseless, shuddering sigh and turned to the other side.

This was a puzzle Sai had yet to figure out, a puzzle of which he did not yet know the nature.

He turned his attention back to the observation of the rest of the pack. Temari, her berth level with Naruto's but on Sai's other side, slept with one arm draped over the side of the canvas and the other wrapped around her tessen, keeping it close even in unconsciousness. Beside him, Haku curled loosely, cocooned by his cloak and an extra blanket.

Sai closed his eyes again but did not sleep, his mind wandering aimlessly through tanto katas and memories and speculation of the impending siege.

No. He needed sleep for optimal functionality. He cleared his mind deliberately. The thoughts crept back in.

He brushed a hand over his face and flinched instinctively. Shizune-sensei had taken him aside after dinner to heal the remainder of the damage to his face and ribs, her iryo chakra strong and steady to Shisui-sensei's flickering candle, but Sai still felt their phantom ache. He opened his eyes, resigned to lost sleep and slipped sideways out of his hammock.

Gaara eyed him without judgement or accusation from his bottom hammock, where he sat rolling a ball of compressed sand in one hand. Interacting with Gaara did not require speaking to Gaara. Sometimes, interacting with Gaara did not require interacting with Gaara at all. Sai sat on the floor beside his teammate and stared sightlessly at the far wall and let the shuffling of the pack and the creaking of damp timbers fill his mind.

Sai managed a scant few hours of sleep before Temari - always an early riser - tossed a balled up towel at Naruto, in an attempt to wake him to help her with breakfast without disturbing the rest of the pack. As trying to wake Naruto without disturbing anyone else was always an exercise in futility, Naruto woke flailing, fell out of his hammock, and subsequently the entire pack trooped into the hallway towards the kitchen for an early breakfast.

"Hey. Dollface." At the tail end of the pack, Sai turned to find Zabuza-sensei looming at the far end of the hallway. The Swordsman crossed his arms and waited until the rest had filed into the kitchen, watching Sai with unfathomable eyes. Sai resisted the urge to watch the others go. "Heard you killed a couple kids out there."

"Yes," Sai said.

Zabuza-sensei eyed him. "You all right?"

"Yes," Sai said.

Zabuza-sensei stared at him long enough that Sai felt prickles of uneasiness crawling up his spine and a visceral urge to flee. Then he shrugged and muttered, "Whatever, fuck it. Let's get you to the front lines."

Sai blinked. "Now?"

Zabuza-sensei snorted. "And deal with One Eye the Younger moping around because I'm ruining your childhood? No. Eat your breakfast first."

Sai did not understand the correlation. "Breakfast - will equate an intact childhood?" he asked, just to clarify.

"Mhmm." Zabuza-sensei flapped a hand at him impatiently, already turning to go. "Nutrition. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and all that shit. Big day ahead." With that, he sauntered back down the hallway and vanished.

Sai frowned. Two inquiries as to his general well-being in as many days by two different sensei? Once could be categorized as an isolated incident, but twice implied a pattern.

He paused to reevaluate his condition. _Nutrition: suboptimal. Caloric intake: suboptimal. Mental status: optimal. Suboptimal?_ In truth, Sai did not know how an optimal or suboptimal mental status entailed. _Functional?_ He was functional.

No further evaluation needed. For lack of other options, Sai went into the kitchen to retrieve his childhood.

"How frequently have you joined the battle?" Sai asked Temari over the imperfectly mixed, slightly overcooked steamed egg that Naruto presented to him proudly.

"Hm?" said Temari, distracted in the midst of sorting out the rice and salted fish. "Uh, my team pretty often. Most days. Zabuza-sensei usually takes us out with him unless we're all together and they're planning a big offensive, then he just goes with Shisui-sensei and Itachi-sensei and the captain." Sai recalled the last battle that required all four to fight at the same time, though it had mostly been a one sided assault, and understood why even Team Suzaku would sit that out.

"We never get to fight!" Naruto chimed in, thumping his head down on the table to sulk. Neji subtly moved his bowl away further away. He had grown too accustomed to Naruto's mannerisms to make a biting comment.

"Yeah, we do," Sakura corrected, rolling her eyes.

"From far away," Sasuke muttered.

"We just chuck kunai at people from behind trees or rocks or buildings or something," Naruto complained. "That's not fighting. They barely even throw things back at us!"

Team Suzaku could probably battle a jounin if they worked together. Team Genbu could stave off an attack from a tokubetsu-led squad. Short of a Kyuubi-induced berserker-state Naruto, a single chuunin could quash Team Byakko. Given either outcome of the latter, Sai was not surprised Naruto's team had been kept from the fighting.

Based on Hinata's earlier reaction, Sai expected Naruto would have a negative reaction should he point this out, so instead, he offered, "My team has not seen combat in five weeks."

"Oh, man, that sucks," Naruto commiserated, oblivious to the slow smirk curling across Gaara's face on his other side. Sakura, across the table from them, was not. She shot first Gaara, then Sai, an alarmed glance.

Zabuza-sensei opened the door without warning, and half the pack lunged belatedly for the masks hanging around their necks or perched on top of their heads before realizing who the intruder was. "You all fucking suck at stealth," Zabuza-sensei said, unimpressed. "Teams Genbu and Suzaku, we're going for a spin."

"Hey!" Naruto complained, outraged, even as Sai put his chopsticks back in his bowl and stood. Temari shoveled one last spoonful into her mouth and mirrored him, nodding at Gaara. "What about us?"

Zabuza-sensei was unmoved. "I don't know, ask someone who cares. I haven't slept in fifty hours. Genbu and Suzaku, come the fuck on."

"All right. You three know what to do. Go wild." Zabuza-sensei waved his hand dismissively at Team Suzaku.

"There's nothing to go wild on," Temari said, unimpressed. "We're just clearing streets."

"No shit, princess," said Zabuza-sensei, rolling his eyes. "Every single street from here to the mountain passes need to be cleared, unless you want to get fucked by a team you let get past you. This is an invasion, it's not supposed to be fun."

Temari sighed with an air of polite disgruntlement. "You and I will take point, Ni," she directed. "Ichi can leapfrog."

Neji nodded shortly, unsheathing his tanto. "Relief is coming at 1500 hours?"

"Yeah," said Zabuza-sensei. "Get going."

Temari glared before following Neji down the street, one hand on her tessen slung over her back. The streets were eerily quiet though it was the middle of the day, the houses quiet with shutters drawn so as not to betray their occupants within. They slipped along the edges of the buildings, and Temari's head turned at every alley and side yard, but Neji faced forward unwaveringly. At the next intersection, they paused, Temari with her front to the wall to give her room to swing if she so needed it, and Neji with his back to the wall so his blade pointed towards the corner. After a moment, Neji nodded, and Temari flicked a sign back to their group. _Go._

Haku straightened, hands still tucked in his sleeves, and stepped forwards.

"Hey, kid," Zabuza-sensei drawled in a low voice that nonetheless carried in the unnatural silence, and Haku paused. "Don't disappoint me."

"I won't," Haku said serenely, and glided briskly towards the rest of his team.

"All right, runt patrol," said Zabuza-sensei, turning without watching his apprentice go. "This way."

Zabuza-sensei took them to what their team had spent over a month avoiding even more stridently than running water: a shinobi checkpoint. Hinata balked, stopping short in the street when she realized where they were going, and Gaara uttered a muted snarl of protest when he nearly walked into her back. Sai unsheathed his tanto as discreetly as possibly, tucking the flat of the blade against the soft underside of his forearm. None of them were sufficiently subtle, because Zabuza-sensei turned around, took in their defensive stances, and growled, "Relax. This one's ours, as of seven hours ago."

"W-why don't we go through the fence?" Hinata asked, her trepidation wavering in her voice.

"Or over," Gaara contributed in a voice still rusty from disuse, glaring at the checkpoint with deep suspicion.

Zabuza-sensei huffed an impatient sigh. "And feed your neuroses? Nah. You're supposed to be shinobi. Suck it the fuck up and follow me."

A direct order. Sai shifted his grip on his tanto and followed.

There was a shinobi standing guard outside the door. "Captain," he greeted Zabuza-sensei, once he had rattled off the passcode. He paused, eyeing Sai and his teammates with their carved masks and furred cloaks curiously. "They're different today."

Zabuza-sensei glared him into silence. "We're here to relieve Team 133," he growled. "Where are they?"

"Uh, all of you?" the shinobi blurted, and then cringed. "I mean, they're holding position two blocks east, sir."

"Hn. Direct the teams this shift to keep pushing," he ordered. "Eight hour shift, move the line two kilometers. No gaps."

"Hai," said the shinobi, and leaned back slightly as Zabuza-sensei pushed past him without another word. His sudden presence startled the teams in the checkpoint break room; he left a crash and loud clatter in his wake as he stalked past, and as Sai glanced through the doorway he caught a glimpse of one shinobi on the floor, having tripped backwards out of his chair, another with food spilled down his front, and an upended food tray on the floor.

Gaara brushed in front of Sai on his way out the far door, fleeing back out into the gloom of overcast skies.

On this side of the fence, in one of the lower city's several market districts, business had stagnated in the face of the impending violence. The stores they passed had doors padlocked shut, windows boarded over. This would not save them if a battle between elite ninja erupted, but was sufficient defense against a stray blade.

A man in a tattered coat and shoulders drawn up around his ears rounded the corner at a half-run and flinched back hard when he saw the four of them coming up the street towards him. Sai glanced at Hinata, who paused and shook her head, signing with hands half-hidden under her cloak. _Weapons, no, shinobi, no._

"Get back inside," Zabuza-sensei growled at the man as he passed without a second glance. "Get in the way and there won't be enough of you left to burn."

The man watched them leave, frozen, his eyes fixed on Zabuza-sensei's still sheathed katana. Sai turned his head as they reached the end of the street to see the man still staring. Then he turned the corner, and the man was out of sight.

Zabuza-sensei relieved Team 133 with a perfunctory, "Get lost, bring all your shit, don't lose your shit," and watched with a glower as they vanished back towards the checkpoint with exhausted slumps in their shoulders. He then turned his glare on Team Genbu. "This is how it's going to work," he said, and pointed down the street. "Hotshot here's going to go down the block with midget. When they hit the corner, dollface leapfrogs to the street on the right, then clears the left. Then you start over." He levered a stare at Gaara, who was staring past him somewhere next to his shoulder - perhaps at the blanket and bedding store. "You don't leave her, understand? You get attacked, you cover her first."

After a long pause, Gaara nodded, still staring at the boarded-up store.

Like the rest of the sensei, Zabuza-sensei was not bothered by the seeming inattention. "I'm going to be here, doing some godsdamned paperwork," he said. "Don't fucking rush. I'll catch up with you every couple of streets in case you get jumped."

 _Paperwork in enemy territory?_ Sai glanced at his teammates to make sure he had not developed an ear infection or other malady that might inhibit his ability to hear accurately. Hinata's mask was tilted very slightly, but Gaara was still staring at the store, so the answer was inconclusive. Zabuza-sensei inadvertently answered his question by pulling out a roll of papers from the pouch at his waist and proceeding to disregard Sai's team.

"Kyuu, Shichi," Sai prompted, and nodded down the street. Hinata reached up her sleeves for her hiogi fans, snapping them open with a flick of her wrists, and advanced. Gaara followed a few paces behind, padding on silent feet with a slightly vacant stare. Sai watched as Hinata stopped at the next corner. She did not turn her head to look because she did not need to, but murmured something under her breath to Gaara. Gaara, angled so he was facing the building wall and Sai in equal measures, signed _go._

Sai glanced back one last time at Zabuza-sensei, who ignored him in favor of flipping a page and scribbling on a with a pencil he had acquired when Sai was not looking. Sai adjusted his grip on his tanto and jogged towards his teammates. "Clear?" he asked coming to a stop at their backs.

"I'm checking the buildings on this block," Hinata murmured, distracted. "Give me three minutes." Sai waited. "Go," said Hinata.

Sai rounded the corner and stepped on a wire.

The blast gouged a massive hole in the street, took a chunk out of the building they had been standing next to, and would have ripped all three of them apart had Gaara not thrown a sand dome over them with lightning reflexes. Sai blinked in the sudden darkness, his ears ringing, disoriented.

"Status," he got out, the words sounding muffled and very far away.

"Fine," Gaara muttered, which Sai felt more than heard, his back pressed against the jinchuuriki.

"Fine," Hinata echoed grimly, then, "I should have seen that."

"We were all careless, " Sai corrected, remembering how cautious Team Suzaku had been.

Gaara let the sand crumble away to reveal the street once again, the air choked with dust and smoke, and Zabuza-sensei with his sheaf of reports still in hand. "Hope you learned a valuable lesson there," he said, still without looking at them. _"Don't let your fucking guard down."_

Lesson learned. "Yes, Sensei," Sai said soberly.

Zabuza-sensei grunted. "Go on, then. Lots of ground to cover."

The building that had taken the brunt of the blast had housed a restaurant. Sai caught sight of splintered tables and chairs thrown against the far wall as he glanced down the remainder of the street _visibility: 40%; doors leading into the street: 26; people on the street: 0; obvious seals or exploding tags: 0; ideal locations for traps: 6._ "Kyuu," he said. "Do you see anything?"

"No," she answered. "But be careful."

Sai did not think it wise to rely solely on his blade. He pulled out his scroll and painted in bold lines a great tiger that peeled free of the paper when he sank his chakra into the ink. The beast bore more than a passing resemblance to Koharu, the tiger who with her shinobi Sai had encountered just a few days earlier. Sai sent the tiger padding down the street first, then followed in its wake cautiously.

He reached the end without incident, an alley that terminated in a familiar chain link fence, but even so could not help the prickle of adrenaline sharpening his mind. His tiger swung its head around, and they returned a little quicker to the ruined intersection.

The ground rattled beneath their feet. Sai paused warily, and Gaara glanced up, but he did not observe any tell-tale plumes of smoke or flame. He hurried back to the rest of his team nonetheless.

Hinata's head was tilted down as she examined the next street closely. At Sai's approach, she tipped her head at Gaara, and the pair started down the opposite side.

The sticky salt-breeze plastered grit to his exposed skin and irritated his eyes. Sweat dampened the back of his neck despite the chill that burrowed under his cloak. In the distance, he could hear isolated explosions, some closer than others. Perhaps a dozen blocks to the north, a plume of smoke rose over the buildings.

"Care on this one," Hinata said. "There's a seal underneath the awning of the ninth store on the left."

Sai frowned. "Exploding tag?"

"I don't recognize the design," Hinata said, her words distorted in the way that told Sai she was biting her lip.

"We should trigger it from a distance, in any case," Sai said, and sheathed his tanto in favor of a kunai. Hinata and Gaara retreated around the corner as Sai drew the kunai back and hurled it.

It bounced off.

It landed on the street with a clatter. Sai experienced a mild jolt of what was either horror or a static shock. He turned back to Hinata. "Did I miss?"

"No," she said. Gaara's head canted to the side, some of his sand settling closer to his shoulders as he peeked around the corner. "You struck the seal but did not penetrate it."

Sai joined his teammate in scrutinizing the overhang with the seal once again. "That looks like cloth," he observed.

"As far as I can tell, it is," Hinata said. "But it repelled the blade anyways."

"Seal," Gaara said.

"He is correct," realized Sai. "Juu-sensei needed to channel chakra with a specific method to break the seals on the Juroujinmaru. A blade by itself must not be enough."

"It must have a sensor component," Hinata mused. "Like the wire."

Sai looked back at Zabuza-sensei, three blocks back and by all appearances ignoring their predicament. He glanced sideways at his ink tiger. "If it senses chakra or weight, my tiger has less than a person of each," he offered. "But it may be enough. I will send it first; alert me if anything changes."

Gaara held out a hand, and a ball of sand formed in it. Sai watched curiously, and when he didn't move to take it, Gaara jabbed it at him.

"Is that for chakra?" Sai asked, picking it up gingerly. Gaara's sand tended to have additives in it, such as blood. It was heavy, staying solid and unnervingly warm in his hand. Gaara did not answer. It must have been for chakra and weight both, since his tiger did not weigh much more than the paper and ink it was formed from. He held the sand out, and his tiger plucked it from his hand with long fangs and padded around the corner. It passed the seal; nothing happened. Sai frowned, held his hand up to bring the tiger loping back to the covered awning.

"What if it's just a sensor seal?" Hinata said suddenly. "Maybe it doesn't trigger a trap."

"We should consult Zabuza-sensei," said Sai, as his tiger leaned up to nip at the seal.

Zabuza-sensei, once he had ambled over in response to their urgent handsigns, shrugged. "I dunno," he said. "Send a message back to base camp for someone who knows seals and avoid the thing."

Sai sent an ink hawk. They moved on.

This was a slow war, taking back the streets one by one. Sai kept his footsteps light as the hours trickled past. Hinata paused at the end of the street that opened into the central port square. Someone had taken down the man that had swung from the flagpole - whether to heal him or bury him, Sai could not know - but the top of the pole and the flagstones still showed the rusty brown stains from the time he spent there.

"Hey, catch that -!" Zabuza-sensei shouted from down the block.

Sai jerked his head up, already flicking open his scroll as a kunai whistled overhead. A dark streak _color: black; speed: 100+ km/h; identification: bird; wingspan: 35-45cm_ twisted easily out of the way of the blade but was forced to bank back sharply when Gaara threw up a wave of sand in its path.

A falcon took shape under Sai's brush, and it tore its way free of the scroll and shot straight up in the air, rocketing up past the other bird's much smaller shape, which wove in and out of Gaara's grasping sand with startling speed. Sai raised his right hand, forming the Seal of Confrontation around his brush, and his falcon - so high he could no longer see it against the sky - plummeted.

No matter how fast the bird was, Sai's ink falcon in a dive was faster. It caught the bird in its claws as it tried to swerve out of the way and barreled them both straight into Zabuza-sensei's hands.

Zabuza-sensei was immeasurably and irrationally smug. "'My birds are the fastest thing on wings,' my ass," he gloated, adjusting his grip to encircle the bird's wings and neck as Sai's falcon fluttered free. "'They can't be caught,' yeah fucking right, Hayaibi, you stupid fucking bastard."

Sai glanced at his teammates to make sure that 'Hayaibi' was not something or someone he should already know. Given the lack of response or general air of understanding from either Hinata or Gaara, he assumed it was so.

Zabuza-sensei pried the tiny roll of paper from the bird's claws, glanced up, and realized that he still had an audience. "Okay, show's over," he grunted, sliding a coil of wire out of his back pouch one handed. "Go, hotshot, the invasion ain't waiting for you."

Sai watched as Zabuza-sensei dangled the trussed-up bird from his belt like a macabre lantern. It squirmed and struggled, the brush of its feathers the only sound he could hear besides the city's perpetual wind. Zabuza-sensei, who deigned to wait with him as Gaara and Hinata progressed down the next block, made a satisfied noise as he squinted at the tiny print on the paper in his hand. "What a stupid fucker," he added affectionately. "Always uses the same shitty frameshift code."

Sai eyed the paper warily.

Zabuza-sensei rolled his eyes. "No, it's not a trap," he growled. "Too much pride was always Hayaibi's biggest weakness. And his birds." He flicked his eyes up long enough to catch Hinata and Gaara's tentative but yet unchallenged advance down the street before turning back to the intercepted message. He scribbled on the paper and waved it in Sai's direction. "Get this back to HQ," he ordered. Sai sent it off with his falcon obediently.

Sai - at least somewhat influenced by Naruto - had envisioned that when the time came, the war would be something like the sinking of the Jurojinmaru, but on a much larger scale - destruction, confusion, the shattering of wood and bone, the crash of blade on blade, the fireworks of chakra-intensive jutsu. Creeping through empty streets felt more like stumbling across a ghost town. "This is a quiet invasion," he noted aloud.

Zabuza-sensei snorted. "The battle ain't up here, dollface," he drawled, and stamped his foot on one of the metal sewer covers. "It's down there. Did you think everyone else was just kicking it at the ship?"

Sai supposed not. "Then the front lines are below," he said. "And ahead?"

"Yep," said Zabuza-sensei, shifting to lean against the wall of the nearest building.

Sai frowned. "The loyalists do not seem to be fighting very hard to defend the streets."

"Whoever keeps the water below wins the streets," Zabuza-sensei drawled, squinting off into the distance. His eyes appeared bloodshot, but his gaze was sharp as ever. "Neither side is willing to risk losing an all-out battle in the streets yet - it'd be much more destructive than what's going on in the sewers. But aboveground teams still have to follow the battlefront or risk the front lines below getting cut off. Overreach and they'll be the ones surrounded."

"It seems a lot of effort for ground they do not intend to keep."

Zabuza-sensei shrugged. "Mizukage knows he's gonna lose the lower city. Don't mean he'll make it easy for us. They'll keep picking off whoever's careless."

War, as ever, required further study. Sai filed away the information away for later consideration and went when Gaara beckoned him.

They stopped once _exploding seals encountered: 7; unknown seals: 1; enemy shinobi: 0; enemy familiars: 1; allies: 0; lapsed time: 5 hours, 13 minutes_ to gnaw their ration bars as the sun finally broke through the clouds. Zabuza-sensei paced instead of sitting down, stalking back and forth under the overhangs. Sai, Hinata, and Gaara huddled between the windows of the sukiyaki restaurant Haku had liked. Like the other shops and restaurants they had passed, a patchwork of wood covered the glass - shorter planks from supply crates, even the board on which the menu had been posted.

Zabuza-sensei glanced up as a dark shape winged its way towards them. Sai thought at first it was his falcon, but he had created it for a short burst of energy for combat; like the tiger, it would have dispelled itself hours ago. "About time," Zabuza-sensei muttered as it drew near, and Sai recognized it as a crow summons.

It pulled up short in front of Zabuza-sensei and fluttered back and forth until he gave an annoyed grunt and raised his arm obligingly for it to perch upon. "Caw," it said.

"What?" grumbled Zabuza-sensei. "No, shit, I don't know your name. Komezu? Yonezu? Kurozu?" the crow eyed him balefully. "Are you from the other one, then?" Zabuza-sensei demanded.

"Caw," said the crow.

Zabuza-sensei rolled his eyes. "How the fuck am I supposed to know?"

"Caw," the crow said, and beat its wings impatiently.

"Needy bastard," Zabuza-sensei muttered, and untied the trussed-up bird from his belt. The crow eyed it with interest as it put up a token struggle, too exhausted and disoriented for more after an afternoon dangling at Zabuza-sensei's waist. "You sure you want this? Tell him they should just eat the damn thing."

"Caw," responded the crow. It flapped, sending loose feathers fluttering in Zabuza-sensei's face and Zabuza-sensei batted in its direction irritably as it plucked the other bird up in its claws.

"You did that on purpose!" Zabuza-sensei spat as it retreated laboriously.

Having watched the curious exchange with interest, Hinata closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall. Her doujutsu had been activated constantly for the first two hours, tapering off as the day drew on. Sai could tell both her energy and her chakra had waned. Even with the mask obscuring most of her face, he could see her eyes pinched at the corners, but her hands were steady still around her hiogi.

Gaara had no such problem. He had chakra to spare, and manipulating his sand cost him very little chakra or concentration. He toyed with it idly even now, forming a kunai from the sand only to mould it into something like San's single-edged bone daggers, then a set of claws that fit over his own fingers. Why, Sai did not know, since Gaara abhorred close-range battle. When their break ended and they continued through the lower city, he kept the claws.

Familiarity warred with the unknown; the streets Sai had haunted for four weeks had been bustling, its citizens wary and worn but undeterred from their lives. Now, these same streets echoed eerily, abandoned, though the real war had yet to truly reach the surface.

The ground rumbled again. Hinata stumbled.

"Hold up," Zabuza-sensei said abruptly, his posture still and tensed. "Something's not right."

Sai glanced up and down the street: empty. His hands itched for his tanto, but he settled for running his hands along the edges of his scroll.

"Hotshot, sweep for chakra signatures," Zabuza-sensei ordered. "Dollface, get eyes in the sky."

Sai painted another falcon, concentrating on his knowledge of its ocular system. His ink gave it body, his chakra ability, and it peeled off his paper in a flutter of ebony wings.

Hinata was frowning, twisting her neck ever so slightly as she searched. "Nothing yet," she reported as Zabuza-sensei shifted on his feet impatiently. "The chakra signatures I see are underdeveloped and indoors; it will take some time to filter through them."

"Fine, whatever, just do it," was Zabuza-sensei's response.

Sai's falcon banked sharply overhead, curling in a tight spiral twice before continuing its slow canvas. "Kyuu - twenty-four degrees northwest," he directed.

"Hai," said Hinata, tilting her head slightly. "There's a team there," she said, her voice colored lightly with disbelief. "Ah - Kiri, estimate one jounin, three chuunin from their chakra coils. Three katanas. Estimate - "

"That's enough," said Zabuza-sensei. "Where'd they come from?"

Hinata hesitated. "There's a sewer opening three meters away with the cover off. They're currently stationary," she added.

Zabuza-sensei knocked the mask up on top of his head so he could scrub his hand over his face. "They don't fucking stop," he muttered. "One thing after the fucking other. Which hack couldn't hold the godsdamned line down there?"

"And another team three blocks south of them," added Hinata, as Sai's falcon wheeled once again.

"Dispel your bird, dollface," Zabuza-sensei ordered. "They're hunting us. It'll give us away."

Gaara rumbled deep in his throat, discontented, as Sai let the falcon splatter against a nearby roof. "Not prey." He twisted his hand into a fist so the curved sand claws pointed out threateningly before letting it drop again.

"Wait," said Sai, even as Zabuza-sensei scoffed.

"You think you aren't prey?" He growled. "Hotshot, to the east. Sweep the streets. Tell me what you see."

Hinata obeyed and flinched. "There are at least three teams, spread out along the streets three-quarters of a kilometer to the east and closing." She flicked her hiogi open, then shut almost reflexively. "All armed. Estimate chuunin and jounin."

"They cannot all be after us," Sai said, frowning. It seemed excessive, to dedicate so many shinobi to kill just one team, when both sides were already stretched thin.

"They can," Zabuza-sensei reassured. "They have us on the wrong side of the lines. They'll get us in a kill box and massacre us."

Hinata glanced nervously at Sai. Zabuza-sensei rolled his eyes. "They're not gonna kill us," he said with exaggerated patience. "They don't know where we are yet. They don't know what we can do. We're going to get behind them and fuck them over."

This was more easily said than done. Sai exchanged a look with Hinata over Gaara's stony glare.

Zabuza-sensei folded his arms. "Normally I'd make you figure this out yourselves but I'm fucking exhausted and I don't have the fucking patience for this. _It's not that complicated._ We need a decoy, we need to sneak behind them, and we need to fucking demolish them. Questions?"

Sai had several, but he also had training forbidding him from interrupting a commanding officer, and Zabuza-sensei, contrary to his words, did not appear to be pausing for questions.

"No? Dollface, make your little cats or whatever for the ambush, then you're the decoy. Break for the south fence, make them think you're going for help. We'll get around behind them when they pursue and pick that closer team off first."

"Hai," acknowledged Sai, spreading his scroll out and kneeling in the street to draw. Like the first, he gave his tigers sharp fangs and claws that curved wickedly from massive paws. His hands steadied as he progressed with sure strokes, the familiar motions easing the adrenaline coursing through him with fits and jolts.

"You two are with me," Zabuza-sensei continued as he painted. "Hotshot, you're going to tell me exactly where those teams are at all times. We're gonna go north a bit." He eyed the line of tigers on Sai's scroll. "They're gonna sense that much chakra. That's the cue," he said. "They come this way, they're gonna find dollface booking it south and go after him. When they leave position, the rest of us slide in between those two teams and swing down south to ambush."

Sai had played the decoy many times in the last month, the one who drew the attention and ire so others could act unnoticed. The role was familiar, the circumstances less so. "Ready," he said, sitting back on his heels.

"Two minutes," said Zabuza-sensei. "Then activate it and run. Dollface, midget, let's go."

As the rest of the team slipped off through the streets, leaving Sai kneeling before his paintings, he tucked the brush and ink away carefully. He took a deep breath and counted down the seconds. The street was empty still, the sun bright above him, and the wind plucked at the edges of his scroll. He leaned down and bracketed the row of tigers between his hands, concentrated, and pushed his chakra into the ink. The ink beasts rose one by one, clawing their way free of the scroll, and when the last had pulled its tail from the paper, Sai snapped the scroll shut, tucked it back into his cloak, and bolted.

He felt, at first, as if he might be wasting his energy, running down an empty street with no pursuers, but he turned the corner and discovered the Kiri team, several streets away, coming in his direction. "Shit, catch him!" he heard, as one of the figures broke into a dead run right at him. Sai ducked a kunai _origin: 350 meters; easy to avoid_ and swerved into the nearest alley.

He leapt and rebounded off the wall, easily clearing the chain link bisecting the alley, and hit the ground running. He turned the corner only to find that another of the team _height: 175-185cm; weight: 68-70kg; weaponry: spear_ had mirrored his detour and was once again closing in on him. Sai veered back east - the wrong way - and hopped the low wall into the mazelike grounds of the Hidoi housing complex.

The shinobi with the spear swore vehemently. The shinobi might be Kiri, but Sai had lived these streets, and Sai knew this complex like the back of his hand.

He took the stairs five at a time, bounding up the tight spiral until he had cleared three flights, then flitted out of the stairwell and down the narrow hallway on the right, crouching so the low wall would cover him from any looking up. He took a hard hairpin right again, then vaulted over the wall down to the roof of the adjacent building, a long, narrow thing with a half-rusted tin roof. It was too exposed, of course, but Sai's objective was not to escape, but to distract.

Instinct jerked him sideways as a kunai sailed past his ear. He took the last two steps to the edge of the roof and jumped. He landed in a neat roll on the walkway of the next building, chancing a glance backwards to see a kunoichi _height: 160-170 cm; weight: 50-55kg; weaponry: standard kunai holster, sheathed katana_ leap down to the roof he had recently vacated and hurl another kunai in his direction. He ducked out of the way, into the relative safety of the next hallway, and ran.

He flipped through hand seals as he ran, and with a spark of chakra a clone appeared to run in stride with him. Sai ducked right, his clone went left.

He did not hear footsteps as he paused, tucked in a narrow alcove alongside a trio of overflowing trash cans, because shinobi were far too well trained to make noise over something so careless as a footfall, but he did hear the kunoichi's low, furious voice as she darted past without a pause, "You better catch that little bastard!"

When she had gone, Sai left the cover of the alcove and slunk to the nearest rail, dropping fifteen meters to the ground and landing in a light crouch on the cracked pavement. He straightened, trotted to the next intersection, and chose the third of the seven pathways that lay before him, heading down the winding road as the precarious cement apartments transitioned into clusters of red mud houses and rickety wooden fences, a miniature village in the complex itself.

He slowed as he wove between the buildings, jumping the fences without touching the wood. He rounded the corner, sidestepping a stack of woven baskets, and whisked his tanto from its sheath just in time to block the katana that came crashing down towards his head.

The Kiri shinobi smiled down at him smugly, cuelly, as he bore down with his longer blade and superior weight. "Gotcha," he purred as Sai staggered backwards.

"Hm," said Sai.

The shinobi's eyes widened, and he leapt sideways, whirling on his heel as Hinata descended from the roofs in a flurry of cloak and battle fans. Sai lunged, interrupting the shinobi's strike, and the man snarled impotently, rearing back as Hinata darted inside his guard.

Hinata's hiogi slashed through the air one after the other, startlingly elegant, and even faster she snapped the second shut and backhanded it brutally across the shinobi's face. Sai took the moment he faltered to draw his tanto back and stab it up and into the man's back.

Hinata hissed between her teeth, skittering backwards away from the spray of blood.

"My apologies," said Sai, disengaging his blade with a sharp yank and letting the shinobi's body drop to the ground beside him with a muted thud.

Hinata jerked her chin dismissively. "You're still too far east," she informed him. "Your remaining pursuers are scattered, and our team has returned behind the presumed front line. We've been advised that we want to eliminate the remainder of this team as well as the second team approaching before the shift change."

 _We_ meant Zabuza-sensei had decided. "Understood," said Sai. "I will draw them back. To the western courtyard?"

"Aa," Hinata agreed, then added dryly, "You didn't think you'd be doing this again so soon, did you?"

"No," Sai admitted.

"You were always good at it," Hinata said. "Etsuji certainly thought so."

"He was a civilian," Sai pointed out, wiping his blade carefully on the downed man's flak jacket. "They are easily impressed."

Hinata tilted her head a little. "Kunoichi closing," she said. "We weren't very quiet. I'll head back; don't get yourself captured."

"I have no intention of it," Sai assured her. She left; after a few seconds, he did as well.

The kunoichi encountered Sai before her fallen teammate, so Sai was forced into a dead sprint to put some distance between them, long enough to reach the catacombs of the brick apartments where she could follow him easily but without a clear line of sight with which to hurl her impressively accurate projectiles.

The kunoichi called out behind him; a teammate answered. Like the baying of the captain's hounds, Sai knew he was well and truly hunted now. He swerved as the road did, curving up and around, and below caught sight of his hunters - the kunoichi and a shinobi chased after him on different roads, nearly parallel, twenty meters apart.

His inattention cost him. Sai turned another corner and jerked just enough that the third shinobi's fist and sword hilt caught him instead of his blade, sending him crashing to the ground against the far wall. He threw himself into a desperate short-range shunshin as the katana slammed down once again, stumbling on his feet as the shinobi whirled after him.

Chakra boosted his jump as he scrambled desperately for the roofs, sprinting headlong across uneven tiles. The shinobi followed, the loud crunch of breaking tiles heralding his pursuit. Controlling his breathing was growing difficult. Sai's heart hammered in his throat as he slipped sideways off the roof, directly into the long covered hallway of the next apartment over.

The end of the walkway opened into a wide open space, ringed unevenly by nine buildings, all of different sizes and styles, and twice as many escape routes. Sai took a flying leap off the end and hit the ground running, darting into the alleyway furthest west.

The alley curved sharply beneath his feet, and when it curved again to its end, he stopped abruptly.

The kunoichi grinned at him sharply, her eyes cold. "Surprise," she said.

Sai drew his tanto, sidling sideways around the building corner, and she let him. Just behind her was the path that diverged to the western and southern walls of the Hidoi housing complex. She must have deduced where he would attempt to run.

He raised his blade in one hand as her teammates padded from the surrounding pathways, raised his other hand in the Seal of Concentration.

"Surrender," ordered one of the shinobi. "You're just a kid. You can be reconditioned."

The kunoichi made a disgusted noise in her throat. "If he wants to surrender, Kiri doesn't need someone like him," she spat.

"I do not," Sai reassured her, motionless but for his eyes flitting between the three shinobi.

The shinobi with the spear eyed Sai's raised tanto and snorted. "Think you're a hero, little minnow?"

"No," said Sai, as around him his ink tigers prowled from the shadows. Zabuza-sensei's mist rolled in, thick and cold and suffocating, and Gaara's sand rose up to envelope him defensively. "I'm the white rabbit."

* * *

Alternate chapter title: Sai Is Still Learning How To Be A Monster


	15. Chapter 15

[15] If You Think About It, Zabuza Is Just An Enthusiastic Social Justice Warrior (Emphasis on Warrior)

Whoever thought it was a good idea to have Zabuza around children thought wrong.

* * *

MISSION REPORT D-210

Contact with enemy combatants: none.

Enemy combatants from origin: Konohagakure observed on five (5) occasions.

Status of AT2: approximate age-appropriate growth achieved.

AT2 acquiring survival and self-sustaining skills, including: toileting, basic arithmetic, basic verbal sentence construction, identification and collection of fresh water, identification of enemy combatants, self-concealment in urban and uninhabited environments.

Skills acquisition rated as ahead of average age group performance in both speed and retention.

Returned to [REDACTED] base of operations, location of targets and allies TAP73I (Targets and Allies of Protocol 73I).

Conducted long range observation of TAP73I.

Resources acquired: uncooked rice, dry millet, miso, acorns, pine needles, wild rabbits, squirrels, dandelions, wild onions, chicken eggs, shoes.

Method of acquisition: no change.

Health status: adequate; slight malnutrition, improved from D-171. No sign of illness.

Notable activities: no change.

Enemy combatants in vicinity: none.

With AT2, made contact with TAP73I.

Provided provisions: dried fish, salted meat, dried vegetables.

Collective mental status: insecurity, defensive behavior, heightened attachment to Operative Cat-15, separation and generalized anxiety, some internal hostility.

Conclusion: TAP73I is largely self-sustaining and in no immediate danger.

Plan of action: Remain with TAP731 for 15 days, contingent on continued absence of enemy combatants, to provide additional support and training.

Operative Cat-15 to depart [REDACTED] with AT2 following fifteen day interval and continue to maintain minimal contact with TAP73I.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

* * *

Somewhere around six months to a year ago, when the little Leaf rebellion reorganized ranks in anticipation for the coming war, Hatake asked him to be a captain in Hanabi-ha. Zabuza laughed in his face and told him to fuck off. Hatake responded by informing Zabuza that he was now a captain, here were the reports he needed to read, and since Zabuza had made the unfortunate life decision of having been rescued from a slow death via medical dissection and human experimentation by the skinny bastard, he found himself the reluctant captain of Unit 15.

Which was not to say that the erstwhile Unit 15 had even known who the fuck their captain was. Zabuza hadn't seen them much before the siege; he sent orders and received reports by way of Shisui or Itachi's summons, a messenger genin or chuunin, or whoever else happened to be close at hand. Zabuza remembered being a new genin, wondering which fucking higher up kept shunting him from watchtower to outpost to warship while they sat in the village casting judgment on all the low caste grunts, and surprise! Now Zabuza was one of those fucking pricks. He wasn't especially thrilled about this development, but again: skinny bastard, rescued, slow death.

Zabuza knew his unit, kind of, since he'd assigned himself or been assigned to them as extra firepower on a couple of raids, and they weren't a complete embarrassment. They were still alive, mostly.

Or, you know, at least half of them. Whatever. At least they weren't the Gull Hill crew.

Zabuza had not slept in nearly three full days and had spent the last eight hours herding Shisui's prized baby infiltrators through clearing the trapped streets. Seriously, who looked at the jinchuuriki with a quarter of his marbles at best and went, _hey, this kid would be great undercover?_ Not Zabuza.

But since Shisui had been hustled into a lengthy debrief because he and his kids actually had managed to crack Kiri's notorious civilian smuggling routes, and since at the time Itachi had gone ten hours longer than Zabuza without sleeping, Itachi got to take a nap and Zabuza got to tramp through the lower city some more.

The little sand princess was right. It was boring as all fuck.

The plus: a couple of teams had popped up behind them and gotten it into their heads that they could cut them off and off them. They were wrong. Zabuza took great delight in correcting them.

"You can come out now," he said, letting the mist dissipate into the sunlight. He crouched to wipe his blade off on one of the fallen shinobi's pants. His three borrowed brats turned as one, which was slightly creepy with their identical little wolf masks, their weapons at their sides but not raised.

Zabuza recognized the tokujo who stepped out - Saeko, one of those rare genjutsu specialists, who wore a gossamer dress of her namesake under her flak jacket which should have looked absurd but somehow didn't. The edges of her dress fluttered as she stopped, heedless of the partially dismembered body at her feet. Zabuza appreciated her unflappable nature. "Captain," she said, and Zabuza acknowledged her with a jerk of his head.. "We're your relief team. I've been asked by the previous shift leader to inform you that there were no casualties in the unit, but seven minor injuries, one major injury, and eighteen incidents of contact with the enemy." The three genin that followed her warily were regular General Forces grunts - Guntai, not Shirei-bu. Zabuza glanced at them once and dismissed them.

Zabuza was not impressed by the report. "Jounin Yobirin," he said. "He's shift leader, yeah?"

"Yes, sir," Saeko confirmed. She slid a rolled paper out of her flak jacket and offered it to him. "This is his report and an updated map with the positions of our teams."

Zabuza grunted as he took then, skimming their contents perfunctorily. "Where's Yobirin?" The shift leader should have handed in his report in person.

"I believe he handed over command to Jounin Kitajima and returned to camp," Saeko said, her face passive despite the nervous shifting of the chuunin at her back.

Jounin Yobirin had a nasty surprise waiting for him. Once Zabuza had gotten at least three hours of sleep.

"There's three teams east of here, watch out for them," Zabuza ordered. "Stay put and keep your heads down until I figure out what the fuck is going on in the sewers."

"Hai," said Saeko, giving the three borrowed brats a curious look. Zabuza mentally deducted points from her for that, because everyone did it and it was getting annoying.

"Genbu, on me," he growled, and stumped back to the checkpoint with the three of them on his heels.

Zabuza's actual team was waiting there, or his actual stolen team, because technically his actual assigned team was the loudmouth blond jinchuuriki's team but if Zabuza was going to drag a genin team after him into actual battle, it was going to be a halfway competent one with his actual apprentice on it.

Haku was slumped over a table in the break room, but straightened as soon as he saw their arrival. He pushed back from the table, stood, and opened his mouth, but Zabuza beat him to it.

"Anything to report?" he demanded, as the smallest midget beelined for his sister and tucked himself under her arm. White-eyes the elder glowered at white-eyes the younger, who shrank back, and silently dared her to attempt the same.

"No," said Haku, who wilted just a little - not enough that Zabuza felt bad, since this was war and Haku could do to toughen up a little. "Our shift was more or less uneventful."

"More or less," Zabuza repeated, because his bullshit meter for his apprentice was finely tuned.

Haku flushed a little despite the mask. "We did encounter an enemy team, but we were able to fight them off without injury."

"Good," said Zabuza nonplussed, and eyed his apprentice up and down to make sure he wasn't lying. He rarely did, but pride was a funny thing that popped back up no matter how many attempts were made to beat it down. "All right, all you hellions. Back to base."

The sand princess sighed in relief. "Thank Kami," she muttered, rocking back on her heels, one hand still tangled absently in her brother's hair. "My feet are killing me."

If she had been his apprentice during peacetime - and she wouldn't have, since he had Haku - he would have made her train until she collapsed for a comment like that. And maybe she knew it, because she sent him a sharp-edged, quicksilver little smile, and he had to hide his own, because if he couldn't have Haku, he wouldn't have minded her, insolent whelp that she might be.

Plus, she wasn't wrong. Zabuza had just tuned out the low-level ache that came with the territory of staying awake for sixty hours and fighting for most of it.

The warship Hoteimaru was an unwelcome sight and poor reward for the end of his shift, but like many things about this hellish war, Zabuza bore it with only a flicker of irritation. "Get some rest," he ordered without looking back as he stalked towards the captain's cabin. As ever, the teams unlucky enough to have been assigned berths abovedeck watched with naked curiosity that prickled at the back of his neck. "You're back on tomorrow."

"Hai," said Haku, crisp and clear for all the rest, and they peeled off to their bunks belowdeck with grateful slumps in their shoulders. Zabuza envied them.

He flared his chakra and knocked on the door.

"Yeah," Nara's voice carried, so Zabuza pushed his way through.

"Who the fuck isn't holding their line in the sewer?" were the first words out of his mouth as he ripped the mask off his face. "My unit can't move until whoever it is gets their shit together."

Only Hatake and Nara were there, staring glumly at the map and Zabuza respectively. Hatake looked about as well as Zabuza felt, with an unhealthy parlor and a dark ring around his uncovered eye.

"Shit, Hatake, you look like hell," he informed the man helpfully. "Get some sleep."

"Anything to report?" said Hatake, ignoring him efficiently in favor of doing the fish-eye at the battle maps.

Zabuza rolled his eyes. "My team got fucking boxed in," he said. "Whoever was responsible for holding Pipeline 83-W through 86-N fucked up and let a couple of teams up behind us."

"We'll redirect Itachi to clear it up," said Nara, tapping his fingers against his arm absently. "He's out on damage control. Anything else?"

"No. Mostly minor injuries, one major. I don't have a detailed report yet; I'll get it later from the shift leader." When he beat it out of him. "My teams in that quadrant need to know when it's safe to advance," Zabuza added grudgingly, remembering Saeko and her team probably skulking in the complex where he'd slaughtered two teams.

"Nara's coordinating the front lines," Hatake said. "He'll deal with it, you're off. And Momochi - full Hana-ha Command meeting in six hours; it's mandatory."

"Good fucking grief, can't we both just get some godsdamned sleep, Hatake?" Zabuza spat, and stalked off to get some of his own.

If possible, Zabuza's mood had worsened when he awoke, because this was the first time Zabuza hadn't been able to weasel out of a Command meeting since sinking the Jurojinmaru.

"You couldn't hide forever," Shisui pointed out in what would have been a very reasonable tone if the little tree hugger hadn't planned to do exactly that himself.

"I'm not fucking hiding," Zabuza growled, prodding at a loose piece of wrapping on his spare katana's hilt. "Hatake took all the credit for the big one, didn't he?"

The more jarring part of the story was how easily everybody else bought it - that Raijuu had more or less singlehandedly sunk one of the more fearsome war machines in all the Elemental Nations. Zabuza had lived with the shifty bastard long enough to realize that Hatake wasn't especially strong on the battlefield per say, not when compared to the likes of Senju or Uchiha or maybe even Shisui himself - but he was damn slippery and exceptionally canny.

"Yeah," said Shisui, eyeing him with amusement, and a judgmental eyebrow he itched to cut off, when he mentioned it aloud. "That's why he was a captain at thirteen. Everyone assumes his mask and callsign was Wolf, but that wasn't him. Hatake-taichou was _Kitsune -_ the Fox."

Zabuza chewed on this information. "He bluffs," he concluded.

Shisui's mouth twitched in a sly smile. "Yeah, but by the time you realize that, he's already got you where he wants you. And he's strong enough."

"That fucker," Zabuza muttered incredulously. "You have a cute codename too, Konoha? Hamster, maybe?"

Shisui scoffed. "I was only in for a two-year enlistment, didn't make captain or specialist or anything since I was underage. Got a regular old grunt callsign - Cat-17."

"That _is_ boring," Zabuza noted, unimpressed.

"Excuse you," Shisui mock-scowled. "I was the star of my recruit class. Two team leaders fought over me."

"Amazing," Zabuza droned. Shisui threw a towel at him that he leaned out of the way of to avoid.

"We're going to be late if we don't leave now," he noted, reaching up to tip his leopard-spotted mask back over his face.

"Hn," said Zabuza unenthusiastically, and stood.

"Z," said Shisui, making him pause before reaching the door. "You sure about this?"

Zabuza scowled down at his own mask hanging on his belt. "Whatever," he growled. "Let's get this over with."

Though he had still wrapped his lower face in its customary bandages, Kubikiribocho slung over his back gave no room for doubt as to who he was. A shocked silence fell over the deck as he climbed up from belowdeck, stalking his way to the captain's cabin with Shisui shadowing him silently. Shisui radiated amusement. Zabuza wanted to punt him off the ship.

He shoved the door open, and an identical hush fell over the occupants. He stepped inside and folded his arms across his chest. Shisui clicked the door shut behind them.

At the head of the room, Senju barely looked up from her perusal of the contents of the table. "Captains Hana-An-010 and Hana-An-031, nice of you to join us," she said distractedly.

The other captains ringing the room stared at him silently with shock, suspicion, or absolutely no emotion at all. Zabuza ignored them, glaring stonily towards the front of the room.

"Tsunade-sama," said one particularly bold captain. Tenru or Tenrai - no, Tenrei. Tenrei Natsugo, some sort of sensor-nin. "I was under the impression that the joint Command meeting was at 0300 hours."

"Yes," Senju said shortly.

The weighing stares returned. Nara took mercy on him and said, "Momochi Zabuza is the Hanabi-ha captain of Unit 15."

This time, after the initial shock and suspicion, the stares drifted to the youngest woman in the room, who rested in an easy stance with her bracer-armored arms crossed over the chest of her armor. "What?" she said. "I've been with Unit 17 for like a year."

"What?" demanded another captain, similar in eyes and bone structure. Zabuza, by way of having spent too much time in close quarters with Shisui, whose official title was something pretentious like 'Captain of Covert Intelligence' and thus knew the identities and deep, dark histories of everyone in the room, recognized these two as members of a very, very rare breed: sisters who had both made both jounin rank and Anbu captain. The rest of the elder's former genin team was in the room as well, captains of Units 11 and 16 respectively, as well as their jounin sensei, so there _could_ be some sort of nepotism at play here, if Nara Shikaku didn't have a reputation for ruthless pragmatism and being an ice-cold son of a bitch. The younger's genin teammates were all dead.

The younger shrugged, and probably would have sounded a helluva lot more smug if they hadn't all been in an official briefing when she said, "I didn't think it was important."

"Captains Yanagi and Yanagi, if you're finished," said Senju, without glancing up from the table.

Yanagi the elder - Komorebi, Zabuza remembered she and her sister both had ridiculously sentimental names - coughed and said, "Yes, Tsunade-sama, our apologies."

Yanagi the younger, Tsukimi, ducked her head in an abbreviated bow, and said, "Well, we got 031. Is 010 there keeping his mask on?"

Ah, the insolence of youth. Zabuza remembered when he had been young and entitled, though granted it had been beaten out of him a lot younger than she was now.

"He's covert intelligence," Nara said patiently. "It's better for him to keep it on."

Tsukimi sniffed. "We knew Houki," she pointed out.

"Houki is currently retired on the mainland because he can't eat or shit anything solid." Nara was remarkably tolerant of this whelp who wasn't even one of his, only the sister of one, which told Zabuza he was willing to entertain these questions because Tsukimi spoke the opinions of the rest of the group. If only Shisui didn't have to keep the mask on. Tsukimi was probably only a couple years older than Shisui, and for whatever reason Shisui liked socializing with his peers, of which there were few he didn't wildly outrank.

"If you're finished, Yanagi," Senju said again meaningfully, finally raising her head and Tsukimi subsided with another apologetic jerk of her chin. "Nara?"

"Right," said Nara, straightening out of his slump. He glanced over the assembled captains, looking for - something, Zabuza didn't know what, and apparently satisfied, said, "As you all know, Yukihyou here was undercover with a team for four weeks in the lower city, and they were able to find additional passageways through the mountains to Kirigakure that bypass the main Karikachi mountain pass, sewer lines, and supply tunnels that run through the Hakkouda Mountains."

" _We're_ calling you 'Yukihyou' now too?" Zabuza muttered out of the side of his mouth at Shisui. Nobody glared at him, because Zabuzahad learned how to shoot the shit without getting caught during even more unforgiving environments.

Shisui, unfortunately, didn't respond, so Zabuza resigned himself to actually listening to the briefing because there was no point in not paying attention unless there was another person to not pay attention with.

"The joint Command meeting with the Kiri Hanran leadership is in less than three hours," Senju cut in. "You have the routes; you have the maps. What I need from you now are strategies."

An older kunoichi that Zabuza could have sworn he last saw as a jounin-in-charge on one of the Northern bases said, "What are the defensive capabilities at the Karikachi pass?"

"Nothing you'll get through with a straightforward assault," Zabuza drawled. That got him more thinly veiled stares.

"We could make a giant wooden horse, hide our shinobi in it, and tempt the loyalists into opening the pass to check it out," suggested one of the younger captains, the abnormally brave and stupid Tenrei.

"Idiot," Tsukimi muttered under her breath, as her sister said, "What kind of fool are you to think that would work on so much as an Academy student?"

Senju, having picked up a tiny wooden marker from the table denoting a genin team, hurled the thing and fucking brained the hapless Tenrei. "If you're going to treat this like a joke, hand me your resignation right now," she snapped, and the room went deathly silent.

The Mizukage commanded similar reactions during his fits of temper - even in a room full of shinobi trained to hide their reactions, Zabuza could taste the tension in the air, see the dance of suddenly blank eyes watching each other carefully but turning away milliseconds before meeting another's eyes.

Tenrei peeled himself off the ground without a flinch but kept his eyes down when he bowed his apology and deposited the genin team marker back on the table, which Zabuza eyed with reluctant caution. The little disc could have gone clean through his skull if Senju had wanted - another reason to steer clear of the ornery old cow.

"There are currently only feasible two ways to move enough shinobi quickly enough to circumvent a siege," Hatake said, as if nothing had happened. Senju's sharp amber stare flicked to him and locked on. "Either through the underground sewer and tunnel system, or through the pass itself; both are heavily guarded."

The vaguely familiar formerly-Guntai more-recently-Shirei-bu Haraguni suggested finding an alternate path through the mountains. Zabuza shot that idea down, less gleefully than he would have if it had been one of those small yappy upstarts who were there to talk back and say what everyone else was too much of a soldier to say, because their slopes were trapped to hell and back, and were probably activated the second the first explosive tag hit the Kirigakure main island shore.

The smallest, yappiest upstart - appropriately named 'Kasasagi,' or _Magpie,_ or maybe nicknamed, Zabuza didn't know and didn't care - had been promoted to Captain of Communications because after the death of his predecessor, he was now the foremost breeder, raiser, and trainer of messenger hawks and halfway decent at a handful of jutsu that made them and himself especially slippery; he proved his youthful optimism by saying, "Senju-sama, between you and Hatake-taichou, we can go straight _through_ the mountains."

Ah, ignorance; thy name is magpie. Hatake probably couldn't do more than crack a small hill without help from a convenient thunderstorm, let alone carve a new canyon through an entire mountain range.

Senju simmered; Nara demonstrated his strategic competence by saying, "Thank you, next," before she could take down another captain with a wood chip.

It was a grueling two hours that Zabuza - and Shisui, to a less frequent, less caustic extent - spent picking holes in his fellow captains' proposals, except Itachi, because he quietly suggested a multi-distraction operation that might work as long as one considered luck a skill and not a whim of fate. Senju finally leaned back and snapped, "We're done here."

Zabuza huffed silently. Two hours, and they had established only what they would _not_ be doing. Hatake didn't look upset or concerned, just mildly contemplative; across from him, Nara stared hard at the elaborate battle-map spread over the tabletop with the air of someone intensely ignoring everyone and everything else in the room. The other captains shifted almost imperceptibly on their feet.

"Hatake, Nara, and - " Senju paused for just a second, narrowing her eyes at the assembled captains. "Momochi and Yukihyou. Stay back. Everyone else, out."

Ah, fuck.

Yanagi the elder moved first, snagging Yanagi the younger by the sleeve and towing her out. The rest padded out in their wake in twos and threes except Itachi, who lingered at the door until Shizune leaned in and murmured something that prompted him to follow.

Senju stalked around the side of the table as the room cleared, and when the door shut behind Shiranui, she leaned against the table and crossed her arms. "So," she said. "I'm bringing you four to meet with Terumi before the joint Command briefing."

 _Oh, hell no._ He opened his mouth and Hatake shot him a narrow-eyed warning stare, so he gritted his teeth and amended _what the fuck, you batty old hag_ to, "With all due respect, why are you bringing me instead of Katai or Uchiha the shrimp?" which didn't exactly come out respectful but Hatake should take his fucking wins where he could get them.

"Watch your tongue," Senju snapped, reminding Zabuza why his battle plan in regards to the witch was to glare at her silently until he could distance himself from her godsdamned flicks and foul temper. "Katai is in charge while we're gone, Itachi needs to run the battlefield, and _you_ know the terrain and exactly what Terumi doesn't want us to know. Wear your mask if you want."

Zabuza wasn't going to wear his mask because the cat was already out of the godsdamned bag - or it would be, the second Ao caught sight of his chakra with that fucking eye.

"He's not going to wear the mask," said Shisui, shoving his on up onto his forehead and pushing back his unruly hair. "They already know he was on the Jurojinmaru."

"This is your big reveal, then." Senju looked him up and down critically, then said in a tone meant to provoke, "Dramatic little brat, aren't you?"

Zabuza had years of experience gritting his teeth and shutting up, but he was out of practice. Nosy old witch. He hadn't missed her.

Senju was not impressed with his efforts. "Mute now too?" she demanded. Shisui raised an eyebrow meaningfully at him from behind her back.

"No, sir," Zabuza ground out.

"Your tongue still works, then," was her dismissive response, and Zabuza rolled his eyes hard as she turned. "Do that with your eyes again and I'll rip them out and feed them to you," she threatened, without looking back.

"That's a waste of good eyeballs, Tsunade-sama," said Shisui cheerfully, safe in his knowledge that, of the two of them, he was her favorite.

"Fine, you can have one," said Senju grudgingly.

Zabuza glared at Shisui, since he was the one safe to glare at when _discussing what to do with Zabuza's forcibly removed eyes._ Shisui smirked.

Mei, unsurprisingly, had established her camp in the old lighthouse, where the windows granted an unobscured view of both the lower city and the ocean. She didn't quite lounge in front of the massive round table where her Command had set up a battle map much more permanent and elaborate than Hana-ha's, probably because she had been raised on stories of the Konoha Sannins' prowess in battle and at least somewhat respected Senju.

Old man Ao stood at her right shoulder, giving Zabuza a squinty-eyed glare; planted solidly on Mei's other side was Fukaya Maiko, hands tucked neatly behind her back as she assessed the Hanabi-ha contingent critically. Zabuza recognized the two additional captains Mei had chosen for the joint meeting - Higata Beniko, whose cunning had always been criminally underutilized due to her birth status, and Michishio Yuusei, who was a massive dick.

He stalked into the room after Shisui and valiantly resisted the urge to cross his arms, glower, or otherwise give Senju a reason to try flicking him through a window. None of the Hanran shinobi looked surprised to see him; Zabuza blamed Ao.

"Mei," Senju greeted curtly.

"Tsunade-sama," Mei purred.

Senju jerked her head back. "I have Nara and Hatake; this is Hana-An-010 - codename Yukihyou - captain of the Covert Intelligence Unit, and you know Momochi."

"Oh, we do," said Mei, dragging a languid gaze up and down Zabuza's form as he narrowed his eyes at her. "You remember Fukaya and Senzaki. These are Higata Beniko and Michishio Yuusei, captains of Units 7 and 9." The two captains nodded in unison, the former with a little too much eagerness, and the latter with much too much arrogance. "We don't have a lot of time," Mei continued, "So shall we get to it?"

Mei's Command had clearly considered this part of the invasion extensively, but Shisui's intel brought the conclusion about more quickly. Zabuza watched, mostly, Mei's smouldering aggression and Senju's sharp rejoiners, Nara's considering drawls and Ao's clipped replies. Beniko jumped in and out of the conversation, betraying her enthusiasm; Michishio needled Hatake and Shisui repeatedly despite never getting a response until Mei said, sweetly, "Yuusei, you're _embarrassing me,"_ and Michishio - and Ao, like some kind of ingrained reflex - went bone-white and stopped talking abruptly.

"Hmph," said Senju. "I need to confer with my shinobi."

"Of course," Mei agreed instantly. "Twenty minutes?"

"Acceptable," said Senju, and signalled them to the east side with a jerk if her chin.

"Zabuza," said Mei before he could follow. "A word?"

Zabuza glowered at Ao over Mei's shoulder. "Privately? Yeah."

Mei flicked a hand at her captains dismissively, then turned back to Zabuza as they reluctantly drifted around to the far side of the table. "Zabuza," she said quietly, her eyes sparkling playfully. "You're looking good."

"Am I?" said Zabuza, doing this best to keep his face unimpressed despite the reluctant fondness rising at the back of his throat. "What do you want, Mei?"

Mei, like any predator, knew how to get her teeth in a vulnerable target. "You were on the Jurojinmaru for its sinking too, weren't you?" she prodded curiously. "We expected to see you soon after that." To join up, she meant. In another life, Zabuza might have been one of her commanders - certainly, one of her captains.

"I'm not here to fly your colors, Mei," Zabuza growled.

Mei raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Are you here to make this a three-way war alliance with you and your one-man army?"

"No," he snapped, stalling the inevitable.

She stared at him, comprehension slowly dawning in her eyes. Her gaze flitted over at the Hana-ha contingent, assessing one by one. Zabuza glanced away and gritted his teeth, because she knew him too well. "Oh, you poor bastard," she breathed, almost compassionately. "You stupid fucking bastard. It's not Senju. It's Hatake, isn't it? Hatake holds your life debt."

Zabuza bit back a snarl. "Don't forget who saved your fucking neck during your Academy graduation," he warned.

"And don't forget who smuggled you out of Kiri when the hunter-nin were out for your blood," Mei shot back. "My life debt was paid. But Hatake? You will never pay yours off, not even with a war."

"I know," Zabuza snapped, glaring.

Mei sighed, suddenly tired, and Zabuza knew her well enough to see the disappointment she hid. "Must you be so honorable?" she asked wryly. "You belong with us; you _are_ one of us."

"You know what they say about things like us," Zabuza reminded her gruffly. "'If not honor, what do we have?'"

Mei's lip curled derisively. "Said by the man who damned us all when he bent his neck to save his enslaver."

"That miserable fucking bastard," Zabuza agreed. "We're still pickin' up his mess."

"Mei, my captain, if you don't mind," Senju called impatiently from across the room.

Mei's sultry smile reappeared as if it had never gone. "But of course, Tsunade-sama," she purred, and turned in a swish of her flame-colored hair. "I couldn't keep him to myself if I tried."

The words weighed on him with finality; this was Mei, declaring to her captains that Zabuza was not one of them. It left a bitter taste in his mouth as he watched her sashay away.

The first words out of his mouth when he rejoined the cluster of Hanabi-ha were, "Mei'll try to get you to capture the southern dam. Don't. You're guaranteed to lose most of the shinobi who try."

"Someone's going to have to take it," Shisui pointed out. "Distraction or no, there's no way we can take the pass with that at our backs if it's controlled by the enemy."

"Don't agree," Zabuza insisted. "The land there is rougher than Mei will admit; the only effective way to launch an assault is over top of the reservoir. Konoha-nin don't water-walk as well as Kiri-born, especially not up running water, and better water on water than fire on water. The Hanran'll take losses, but not as many as we would. Offer one or two A-rank specialists to smooth it over, someone long-range."

"Fine," said Senju. "We'll pitch taking over the rest of the overland battles. Mei can have the tunnels and the dams."

Mei did not want the tunnels and the dams, but unfortunately for her, Zabuza was willing to call her out on her bullshit. This tunnel was mostly dry, she said, surely Hanabi-ha could take it? _Only during low tide, Mei, keep your suiton users on it._ Well, then could they take an exploratory team up the Mikuni pass on the side of the western dam? It wasn't much bigger than a footpath, but they could get a good view of one of the feeder routes to the blockade at the Karikachi pass. _Oh, Mei, wasn't that the pass that was prone to avalanches?_

By the time the meeting wrapped up, Ao had his jaw clenched hard enough to creak, and Michishio had tried one slur about a _traitor rotblood_ and damned himself to Mei's promise of a _friendly correction_ if Zabuza didn't get there first. Mei gave Zabuza an almost-glare nevertheless, and Zabuza felt a pang of what could have been either remorse or hunger. He hadn't eaten in probably at least 24 hours.

"Let's wrap this up," said Senju. "There's a lot to get done."

"Why don't we meet on the shore tomorrow?" Mei suggested, leaning forward probably a little too much when Hatake glanced her way. "Just a check in, hmm? I'll bring Ao and Beniko."

"Momochi and Hatake will come," decided Senju, straightening with a sweep of her robes.

And that was that. Zabuza left the lighthouse beside Shisui without so much as a backwards glance for his former comrades. It was 0500 hours, after all; time to round up the kids for another slog through the city.

Zabuza, given the choice at any other point in time, would have kept the ridiculously impressionable and breakable children away from his old sensei, but he could admit he had an ulterior motive. They couldn't hide the brats from Ao's eye anyways. "Punk, hotshot, on me," he ordered, shoving open the door to the kitchen-mess hall thing the next day and making five out of nine jump. Wind sprints on the tab for everyone except Haku, Temari, Sai, and Gaara.

"Why them?" Temari demanded warily even as Hinata scrambled up and Neji collected his bowl and chopsticks.

"You know what," Zabuza said. "Everyone, up. We're taking a field trip for you all to gawk at one of the strongest shinobi in the Kiri Hanran."

Sakura jerked, Sasuke watched with suddenly sharp eyes, and Naruto shot bolt upright and screeched, "Really?" in a pitch that fucking pierced his eardrums. Everyone else reacted much more shinobi-like, but retracting the invitation to the Terror Trio would get him an even louder backlash and Zabuza was not about that right now.

"Is this a mission?" Sai asked.

Zabuza shrugged. "Nah. Just a learning opportunity or whatever. Watch and learn and all that."

"Which shinobi?" Temari asked. "What are we watching?"

Zabuza crossed his arms. "Terumi Mei, Hanran leader, is one. Do any of you - not you, Haku - know anything about Senzaki Ao?" Haku, having been appropriately trained, got that look on his face like he knew Zabuza was about to do something he wouldn't approve of but would never call him out on.

"Yeah, he was a jounin in the last big war," Temari said, half-raising her hand. "Sensor-nin. He's in the old bingo books."

"Sure," said Zabuza. "Anyone else?" He was met by a sea of blank faces, because the rest of the children had grown up feral. It was a miracle any of them could read or even count. "Senzaki Ao is one of the Hanran commanders, famous for being a hunter-nin and a sensor," he explained, "and even more so after he killed a Main House Hyuuga during battle and stole their eye."

Hinata went alarmingly pale. Neji's eyes narrowed furiously. Faces ranged from appalled - Sakura - to deeply suspicious - Haku - to vaguely distant - Gaara.

"Any questions?" Zabuza asked cheerfully.

"Um - !" started Naruto, as Temari said, "What - " and Neji demanded, "Why - "

"Good, everybody grab your shit and get kitted out," Zabuza said loudly over the turmoil. "Meet me topside in ten."

Hatake, when he encountered Zabuza in their shared room picking up the last of his equipment, was not amused. "This is a formal meeting," he said. "Don't bring the genin into this."

Zabuza glanced over, slinging Kubikiribocho up and over his shoulder. "Come on, Hatake," he drawled. "They just wanna watch. We'll stash 'em in one of the old guardhouses where no one can break 'em."

Hatake eyed him dubiously. "What are you up to?" he said, uncharacteristically blunt. "You hate bringing the genin places."

"I wouldn't if they knew when to shut up, like Haku, or if they were actually competent, like Haku," Zabuza retorted. "Plus, you gotta air them out and water 'em and stuff, right? Cheers, they can get some godsdamned sun so they'll stop bitching about being cooped up all the time."

Hatake paused. "That's a good point," he said slowly.

"They'll stay out of trouble if they know what's good for them," Zabuza added, risking laying it on a little thick. Hey, he was useful; Hatake mostly trusted him, probably. Time to spend a little of that trust.

Hatake hesitated. "Fine," he said. "They can watch from a distance."

Zabuza swallowed the thrill of victory and said in as disinterested a voice he could manage, "Great," and stumped off to share the good news with the brats.

The meeting went fine.

Zabuza had very clearly told all the assorted small hellions to stay inside the old guardhouse until he came to get them. He didn't go get them when Senju called for a halt and she and Hatake made for the Hoteimaru and Mei and Fukaya lingered around the edges of the city; he just wandered down the beach a little ways and dropped down to sit on the docks as Ao paused alone on the beach to scan the city. He waited until there was a tiny commotion in the old guardhouse, and then Hinata marched out the front door trembling head to toe like a yellowing leaf in the wind with Neji close on her heels. Haku had the good fucking sense to ice over the door before the blond jinchuuriki flung his body against it.

Ao watched, more curious than cautious, as the pair tottered down the beach towards him. _Strike one._ With that eye, he knew exactly who these two were.

Hinata's posture had tensed into aggression by the time she stopped in front of the man, glaring up at him through the eyeholes of her mask. "Are you Senzaki Ao?" she demanded. "Do you know who we are?"

"Yes," Ao said slowly, glancing between the two of them. "And yes." _Strike two._

The girl paused, visibly gathering her composure. Neji had gone preternaturally quiet. "D-did you steal a Byakugan from one of our clansmen?"

"Yes," said Ao plainly. _Strike fucking three._

Ohohohoho. Old man Ao was in for it now.

Was Zabuza a petty, dramatic bastard? Maybe a little.

"I see," said the tiny heiress said mildly, and though her hands began to tremble again, she drew her head up so she was standing tall. "F-for the i-insult to my c-clan's honor," she began, staring the incredulous Ao in the eye, "for the c-crime of s-stealing our b-bloodline from the d-dead, for the r-right to b-bear the heirloom of my f-family, I - "

"I, Hyuuga Neji, challenge you," interrupted a clear, steady voice, and her cousin stepped in front of her, both blocking her from view and drowning out her challenge. _These idiot fucking children._ Zabuza quashed his glee and reminded himself that suicidal tendencies were to be beaten out of small children, not encouraged.

"N-nii-san," the younger Hyuuga stuttered, startled. She nudged at his back insistently, but he didn't budge.

"I challenge you to death or dishonor."

Ao snorted. "I don't fight kids." _Good on you, Ao, you might just get out of this yet._

"Take the challenge," the idiot boy snapped. "Or so help me I will carve the eye out of your head."

The even more idiot Kiri nin glared. "As if you could even get close, boy. Fine, I accept. Terms?"

"To death."

"Neji!" the girl whispered, appalled. Her cousin twitched at her displeasure but ignored her.

Ao rolled his eye. "Your funeral, kid," he said, and stepped forward. The Hyuuga boy strode forward as well to meet him.

With a whistle and a thud, Kubikiribocho split the earth between them and quivered, standing straight up from the ground. The Hyuuga boy and Ao each leapt backwards, startled, as Zabuza stalked forward.

"This boy is my student," he growled, glowering at the jounin and making no attempt to hide his smugness. "Ao, your opponent is me."

"Sensei - "

Zabuza whipped around with a glare, and the boy snapped his mouth shut. "Don't you fucking start. What the fuck were you thinking?" he demanded, but missed _angry_ by a wide margin and landed firmly in _glee._

Ao swallowed nervously, white, and eyed the blade sticking up from the ground. "Zabuza, this is a Clan dispute," he began.

Zabuza had not been his inferior in many years. "The boy," he repeated, menacingly, "is my student. Your. Opponent. Is. Me."

"Hold on, now," Mei interjected as she prowled down the beach, her eyes hard. Fukaya stood sentry from the roof of the old guardhouse, watching motionless with a tilted head. "Should I not step in? Ao is my commander, after all." She sauntered up behind Ao and leaned forward, tilting her head challengingly at Zabuza. "Careful, old friend," she purred, licking a bead of molten lava from the corner of her mouth. "I surpassed you long ago."

Zabuza sneered, but Mei could be a stone cold bitch, and unfortunately, she was right. He jerked his chin up aggressively. The kunai - sword, in this case - was thrown, and he couldn't take it back, even if that meant he'd be a charred, smoking smear by the end of the day.

"Maa," Hatake drawled, and Zabuza hadn't even noticed his approach. Maybe one of the kids ran and got him, when they saw the Hyuuga girl - and then her cousin, and then Zabuza himself - pick a fight with the second in command of the Kiri Hanran. "I suppose nobody would mind if I joined in? As you would say, Momochi is one of mine."

Zabuza could have kissed the man.

Mei was wary now, because Hatake's reputation as a killer had started when he and Mei both were not yet genin. Her own reports of the Jurojinmaru's sinking had been second- or third-hand, with his and Shisui's contributions minimized as much as possible, and she had never actually seen Hatake in battle. She had only heard the stories of the man who wielded jutsu that cut lightning and split a warship in two, who copied every technique he saw and threw it back stronger, who killed his own teammate to foil a plot Kiri had spent years planning. _Holy shit, this man was going to bluff a kunoichi with two kekkei-genkai, who could kill everyone in a five hundred meter radius by_ breathing _on them, with his borrowed doujutsu and overblown battle stories._ Granted, Hatake still had a good eight hundred jutsu up his sleeve that Zabuza had never even seen, but Mei, after she had come into her own, was breathtakingly deadly.

"Is Tsunade-sama going to come out here too?" Mei asked caustically, sliding next to Ao, who glared straight ahead at Zabuza with his jaw clenched.

"No," Hatake said lightly. "This is all a bit beneath her, don't you think?"

Mei's eyes flashed in anger, but then sharpened in...interest?

 _Good fucking grief._

"Hmm," said Mei, and leaned back. "Perhaps there is nothing here you and I need interfere in," she said, and Ao's eye slid over, alarmed.

Hatake shoved both hands in his pockets disinterestedly. "Perhaps not," he agreed.

"You and I have other, more pressing things to discuss," Mei pressed, tipping her head down so locks of her hair fell in front of her face as she glanced up through them at Hatake.

 _Kami, what was she doing?_

But never mind that, Zabuza could taste victory. He smirked at Ao, baring his pointed teeth, as Hatake said, very neutrally, "That we do."

"Mei - " Aoi protested, eye darting nervously between Zabuza and Mei.

"Shut up, Ao," Mei said coldly. "What were you thinking, taking a challenge from someone else's ten-year-old genin? You dug your own grave. Now, you lie in it. Hatake? I would appreciate my second in one piece when this is over."

"Maa," Hatake deflected as Zabuza glared. "That sounds like something to take up with Momochi, here."

"No promises, Mei," said Zabuza with a shark's grin. "You know my old sensei and I have some history to work through."

"Zabuza!" Mei snapped.

Zabuza bared his teeth. "I don't answer to you," he reminded her, but this was for show, and not for her benefit.

She studied him silently. "Do what you will, then," she said coldly, and stepped back.

"Mm. Don't play too hard, Momochi," said Hatake, patted him on the shoulder almost distractedly, and followed Mei. "Kids," he said over his shoulder. "You've caused enough turmoil today. If you're going to watch, do it from a distance."

The Hyuuga cousins were a fucking wreck who fed each other's worst traits; having narrowly avoided disaster this time, they slunk back to the guardhouse with tails tucked. The adam's apple bobbed in Ao's throat as Zabuza reached out and yanked Kubikiribocho from the ground easily. "You'll get the boy killed," Ao said harshly, ever fighting for his higher ground. "He was lucky today. You should have taught him better than to challenge a full jounin in an honor battle to the death."

Zabuza let the slow, smug grin spread across his face. "I should have," he agreed. "But there's only one man he would have challenged like this. He'll learn, after this."

Ao's eye widened, then narrowed furiously. "You planned this," he realized, outrage darkening his face.

Zabuza shrugged one shoulder indolently. "You, after all, did teach your student not to pick a fight in the wrong. Getting sloppy, old man." Neji had erred, by issuing the challenge in circumstances like these where the alliance was tenuous, but Ao had taken the responsibility when he accepted a challenge from another's student.

Ao, as his old sensei was quickly learning, was fucked.

A few handseals summoned a shroud of mist. It wouldn't hide him from Ao, but it probably would be bad for morale if their troops watched their infighting. Zabuza didn't intend to take long, in any case, and Fukaya would deter anyone who tried to interfere.

"Remember this?" he said conversationally, bouncing his voice through the air with the ease of practice. "First fucking thing you taught me, fighting without eyes. How reliant are you on yours now, my old sensei?" He had four standard issue flashbang tags that the small angry quartermaster would be very upset at him for using outside of battle. He set half of them off without a second thought, closing his eyes as the air exploded into light and ghosting through the mist with ease.

Ao was no amateur; a shinobi didn't survive thirty years of active duty with an obvious weakness. But Zabuza had never had the advantage of sight in the fog, and Ao hadn't had to fight without sight in a long time. A pair of kunai hissed through the mist; Zabuza paused to let them sail past harmlessly.

Zabuza had learned patience from Ao, and how to stalk an unwary prey, but Ao was as much a predator as Zabuza, and whatever slight advantage he'd won from the flash tags wouldn't last long. He reached up for Kubikiribocho's familiar hilt and swung. His blade was not so sharp that it could cut through the thick blanket of mist, and Ao grunted in surprise even as he twisted out of the way, catching the tip of the broadsword on the curved hook of his kunai when he couldn't completely dodge.

"Still so arrogant, Zabuza," Ao said, only a hint of strain in his voice as Zabuza bore down. "Pure aggression will win you no battles."

"You know, I've been spending a lot of time with Uchiha, and no Byakugan - " said Zabuza, shoving him back and disengaging Kubikiribocho, " - means you can't see through genjutsu."

Ao's eyes widened, and his Byakugan reactivated with a pulse of chakra. Zabuza immediately took the opportunity to set off another flashbang tag right in his face.

"Yeah, I lied," Zabuza said dryly, even as he lashed out with his sword once again, and this time caught Ao full in the ribs with the flat of the blade. "Did you really fucking think I used a genjutsu on you?" Ao went down from the force of the blow; instead of gloating, Zabuza pounced, catching his old sensei's wrist in one hand before he could strike with his kunai, and bringing Kubikiribocho to bear with the other. Then, he gloated. "Getting slow, old man."

Ao glared. And wheezed, which Zabuza was immensely smug about.

"Here's how this is going to work," Zabuza drawled, leaning casually on the blade and pressing it just a little closer to Ao's bared throat. "I'm going to graciously spare your life, and you get to choose between a life debt to me or an honor debt to the Hyuuga. It's what you were planning to offer my student, yeah?" he prodded, when Ao just glowered. He leaned in, and the older man choked at the pressure on his throat. "I asked you a question," he growled. "Be a good sport and play along, or I cut out your other eye. I know someone who could use a spare eye."

Shisui wouldn't take it, of course; nonconsensually removed organs from enemy combatants were too much for his delicate sensibilities, and yeah, after Orochimaru, Zabuza could kind of see why, but Ao didn't need to know that or any other of the particularities.

"Tell you what," Zabuza said magnanimously, because he was in a good mood. "No hard feelings after this. I'll even forget all the shit - " he paused and reconsidered. " - _half_ the shit you put me through when I made genin."

"Clearly, I wasn't strict enough with you," Ao snapped, and Zabuza recalled abruptly just how easily the man got under his skin.

He rolled his eyes and pressed down a little harder. "Look, the life debt or the honor debt?" he growled.

"You won't kill me," Ao sneered. "It would jeopardize the alliance and the entire war. You're too much Senju's dog now to do that."

Zabuza didn't feel the need to correct him. "Yeah, I wouldn't get away with murder," he admitted. "But Mei won't break the alliance over a stolen - sorry, recovered - Byakugan."

The older man snorted derisively. "Are you forgetting something? You can't unlock the talisman; you were never hunter-nin."

"Do you know who joined the hunter-nin at age ten?" Zabuza drawled _"Haku."_

Ao paled and tried to jerk away, but Zabuza's weight and Kubikiribocho's edge kept him from moving very far. "That whelp never learned how to deactivate the talisman."

"No one taught him," Zabuza corrected. "But he learned anyways. So," he said smugly. "My bitch or the Hyuugas'?"

Zabuza expected to get a shitstorm for his not necessarily wise but extremely satisfying stunt, especially since Hatake'd stuck his neck out for him. Were he still a Kirigakure shinobi, he would have been shunted off to a public corporal punishment, a stint as a practice target for T&I trainees, and an assignment to one of the warships as a locomotion grunt. Zabuza, before he had learned when to shut up and keep his head down, had had a lot of experience with the fallout of unwise but satisfying stunts.

He opened the door to the cabin he shared with Hatake and was unpleasantly resigned but not surprised to find Senju there, leaning against the rickety table on the far wall with her arms crossed and Shizune hovering at her shoulder. "Close the door," she ordered, and Zabuza did despite the animal hindbrain that screamed at him for cutting off his only avenue of escape. "Care to explain?"

Zabuza had two options: he could grovel and probably get his ass kicked, or he could pretend ignorance and maybe get away with it but probably get fucking obliterated.

"The Hyuuga boy challenged Senzaki Ao in a duel by the laws of the old clans," he said, which was entirely true. "Ao accepted, so I stepped in."

Senju's eyebrow twitched down. Zabuza's sense of impending doom rose. "How did Neji know who Senzaki was or where he was going to be?"

Yep, Zabuza was fucked. He had a feeling that denying his part in it all would only dig the pit deeper, so he admitted, "I told the kids and brought them out to watch the joint meeting. Figured they could use the air."

Senju's expression smoothed. "Bullshit," she said lightly, and cracked her knuckles absently one by one. "Don't lie to me again."

Kami fuck the woman was terrifying. Zabuza's heart skipped a panicked beat, the ache in his ribs remembering the time she had punched him straight through three meters of rock the first time he talked back too much, thinking that medic-nin _did no harm._ "I," he said slowly, "may have expected that this would happen."

"You wanted this to happen," Senju corrected mercilessly.

Zabuza glowered at the wall just past her ear. "Yes. Sir."

Zabuza has been the subject of enough torture and interrogation classes that he knew what Senju was doing when she let the silence stretch.

"You risked a diplomatic incident and the outcome of the war for a petty grudge," Senju said at last.

It did sound pretty serious when she put it like that. "We never actually planned to off each other," he tried.

Senju narrowed her eyes at him. "That's the only reason you're not a smear on the floor."

"Tsunade-sama," Shizune murmured reproachfully.

"I should kick you back down to genin," Senju snapped.

But she wouldn't. Zabuza was, for some godforsaken reason, a captain, and the shinobi with the most knowledge on Kirigakure and its defenses in Hanabi-ha. He did his best to look contrite or at least not too self-satisfied.

He was apparently unsuccessful, because Senju cuffed him around the head like an errant genin, throwing him into the cabin wall where his head left a round dent in the wood. He tasted blood in his mouth. He staggered upright with as much dignity as he could muster and clamped down hard on the blind fury that surged in the back of his throat.

Senju snarled, "Pull a stunt like that again and you'll wish Orochimaru still had you."

Low fucking blow. Zabuza's scars itched, but the needling was on purpose; as ever, since that first day Hatake dragged him and Shisui to her to heal like mice a cat'd tormented and mauled, she pushed to see if he'd crack.

"Suna was founded for survival," Zabuza managed to grate out, despite the black spots swimming in his vision. "Konoha founders wanted peace. Kiri was born from subjugation, and her shinobi value strength most over everything else. Ao accepted a genin's challenge, and I kicked his ass. You have the advantage on Mei now."

She considered him for a long pause as he blinked his vision back in. "That's true," Senju said very grudgingly. "You're on thin ice, you hear me, Momochi?"

Most jounin unleashed their killing intent abruptly, an ambush to catch an unwary prey off guard. Zabuza only recognized the gradual rise of Senju's when she stepped forward to seize him by the collar of his flak jacket and he realized he couldn't move. "You," said Senju, dragging him down to her level, "will never involve the children in your schemes again. You will not _scheme_ when other lives are on the line. Am I clear?"

Frankly, Zabuza didn't understand what the fuck was so different about this and shoving the kids into battle, which all of them regularly did. Shinobi, right? "None of them were in any actual danger," he said, and then hastily, "Yeah, fine. Clear, sir, no endangerment," when her eyes narrowed dangerously, because that was the only acceptable answer.

She let him go with one last shove. "That's three times now Hatake's stuck his neck out for you," she noted, studying him with sharp amber eyes. "I thought you were the one who owed him a debt."

 _Nosy old witch,_ Zabuza didn't say, but the words bit deeply anyways. He was sick of people rubbing his life debt in his face. He moved Senju to the top of the list of people he would off if he ever paid the damn thing off.

Senju brushed off her flak jacket facetiously and jerked her chin at Shizune. "Next time you won't get off so lucky," she warned. "One toe out of line and you'll piss blood for a month."

The thing about crossing iryo-nin was that they knew exactly how much internal damage they could get away with without killing their victim.

Haku rarely bunked with him anymore, since space was limited and Zabuza's roommate was usually Hatake now. He spent his free time with the rest of the children, at first because Zabuza had said, _guard them, they're the mission,_ and later because Haku, despite his best efforts, was lonely, and the pack of children that called themselves Yorozoku folded him in easily as one of their own.

He didn't particularly like it; that ugly thing that lived inside of him reared its head and growled _mine,_ because Haku was supposed to be his and only his. He liked it even less when that ugly thing compensated for the change in status quo by latching onto the eight other hellspawn and declaring those _mine_ as well. The fuck did Zabuza have use for that many baby shinobi, anyways?

At least Haku was useful and could take care of himself. Zabuza found him in the empty kitchen-thing, meticulously stitching a long rip in Zabuza's spare Anbu blacks. "Hey, kid," he greeted gruffly, still a little high with getting away with almost-murder with a literal slap to the side of the head. Konoha shinobi had such a distaste for violence outside of battle - even after years of working with them, it still managed to surprise him.

Haku glanced up, greeting, "Zabuza-san," automatically, but the crinkle at the corner of his eye was a little strained.

Zabuza rolled his eyes, but Haku had been the one to patch him up after he got on the wrong side of the Mizukage's fury, those last few years, and he was familiar with the wrath of a commanding officer. "Leaf-born are soft. She barely touched me."

"Hai," Haku agreed while disagreeing.

Zabuza was familiar with his apprentice's moods. "You don't think I should have done it."

Haku's eyes widened. "No!" he said quickly, but wouldn't meet Zabuza's eyes. "No, I - "

"Spit it out, Haku," Zabuza ordered, before his apprentice could spiral into a guilty silence.

Still, Haku hesitated. "Perhaps it wasn't the best timing to confront Ao-san."

"Hm," said Zabuza, because he wasn't wrong. "And?"

"It is harder," Haku admitted at last, his gaze darting to Zabuza's and away again. "Going against her will. It's harder than defying the Mizukage's."

Ah, Haku. Konoha really did kill with kindness. "She's a shinobi," Zabuza countered. "We answer to her now, but not forever." Haku watched him apprehensively from under his eyelashes. Zabuza sighed and capitulated. "I don't plan on pickin' any more fights I shouldn't, all right? Plenty of battles coming up."

"As you wish," Haku demurred, and tied off his stitch. The snick of his kunai cutting the thread was loud in the air between them.

It was too quiet, by far.

"Where are the brats?" Zabuza asked suspiciously. He didn't think they'd try anything after the Hyuuga cousins had landed themselves in deep shit with Shisui, probably, and himself later, but he had learned over the past year that where there was trouble to get into, the brats would find it.

"They are in the sleeping quarters, trading stories they've heard so far," Haku answered easily, tucking away his needle and spool of thread. He folded the shirt into a neat rectangle.

"Yeah? Why aren't you there?"

Haku didn't meet his eyes. "This afternoon," he said. "I don't think they know you intended to orchestrate the confrontation, but they did not understand my actions."

Gods damn it all. _Guilt._ This was why Zabuza didn't want Haku hanging around so many Konoha lily-livers. He'd caught their fucking sentiments. "You let the Hyuuga brats out because I needed them out; you kept the rest in because I needed them in," Zabuza reminded. He hadn't even needed to tell Haku what he wanted him to do.

"I know, Zabuza-san," Haku said quietly. "I would do it again without hesitation. I just - I felt a little crowded, today."

Ah. Crowded, Zabuza could fix. "Hatake's gone for the next eight hours," he said. "Come on."

With Haku, Zabuza let his tension ease as he sat crosslegged on his bunk with Kubikiribocho balanced across his knees, smoothing blood into the metal. Haku had started cataloguing his poison stores but had fallen asleep, the little glass vials scattered across the sheets as he curled next to them. Zabuza picked them up, carefully, sliding them back into their carrying case. Haku would have to sort through them again for his carelessness. He was still wrapped in his thick fur cloak, as he had the entire summer until the air grew chill, but when Zabuza brushed against Haku's bare hand as he reached for the spare blanket, his skin was cold to the touch. He tossed the blanket over his apprentice. Ice ran through Haku's veins; he had never truly known warmth, and never would. But as the weather drifted to winter, Haku's power only grew.

Haku was literally the best fucking thing that had happened to him in his shitty life. Haku could be the best shinobi Mizu no Kuni had ever seen. Zabuza would be a fool to lose him.

"Hey, Z," said Shisui, opening the door without so much as a knock. "Can I ask you something? What the fuck?"

Zabuza wished he had one of the other threes' ability to cause massive damage just by glaring. "No," he snapped - quietly, because Haku was still bundled up in his bed and a sleep-deprived tool was a suboptimal tool.

"We're literally shipping everyone out in a day," Shisui hissed. And then repeated, "What the fuck."

"We got one over on Mei, now she'll stop trying to shove all the shit jobs on us," Zabuza grumbled. "Everything worked out. Senju's not even that mad."

Shisui was not mollified. "I had to yell at the kids," he said, and glared at Zabuza. "Hinata-chan cried."

Zabuza made an effort not to roll his eyes, because then Shisui would really give it to him. "Maybe she shouldn't have tried to challenge a Kiri hunter-nin and Hanran commander to a death match, then."

"Don't pull that bullshit on me. You set them up for that," Shisui snapped. "Did you have to pick _now_ for your little grudge match?"

"The Hanran wouldn't take me seriously unless I did," Zabuza said, unmoved. "I had to show 'em I still have teeth or the entire lot would be up our asses the entire time we try to coordinate."

"Don't drag the kids into this again. They're not ready for your political games," said Shisui, and wriggled into the narrow space between Haku and Zabuza despite his snarled protests. "You Mist savages. Doesn't it get tiring, always having to guard your back against your own comrades?"

Zabuza shrugged; that was just life. "Keeps us on our toes, don't it? So we don't get soft and fat like you you Konoha squirrels."

"Squirrels," Shisui parroted in a low grumble, incredulous. He shifted around to a more comfortable position, jabbing his elbow into Zabuza's ribs as he did.

Zabuza scowled at him, carefully propping Kubikiribocho against the wall on the floor next to the bed. "Don't you have your own room?" he demanded, squishing himself in the corner to get away from Shisui's bony joints. This was his bunk, damnit, why the hell was he crowded out of his own goddamn bunk?

"Yeah," said Shisui, "well. Itachi asked if he could have some time with Sasuke-kun."

"Fold the brats into his unit and he'll have plenty of time with him," Zabuza drawled. "They've had enough experience at this point not to get killed."

"Did you forget about the Jurojinmaru?" Shisui asked dryly. "The first time they were in the field by themselves?"

"We found out the blond brat can burn a hole through a ship," Zabuza pointed out. "Small pink child can take torture. Mini angry Itachi-clone knows how to not bleed out. They're not complete wastes of space."

"Naruto-kun can't control the Kyuubi or draw on its chakra naturally," Shisui countered. "Sakura-chan has nightmares every night. Sasuke's gotten way too aggressive and reckless."

"The battlefield'll shape them up," Zabuza retorted. "War's touched them already. They'll learn fast."

Shisui sighed. "I know they would," he said glumly. "But we can't let them out in the field just yet. Naruto's already lost control twice." He blinked mournfully at the ceiling.

Good grief. Did Shisui have to come all the way to Zabuza's room just to _emote_ all over him? "The fuck is your problem," he muttered. "If you're gonna sleep, just sleep."

"You _love_ me, Z," Shisui said nonsensically even as his eye drifted closed.

Zabuza, pretty sure a nap would be the hard reset Shisui needed to stuff all his messy emotions back where they belonged, tolerated it. _Teenagers._

Zabuza had never actually needed to rally his troops or whatever and get them hyped to charge to their deaths. In Kirigakure, fear was a sufficient motivator, and where it wasn't, hatred was. Since his unwitting initiation into Hanabi-ha, his unit had been scattered across different bases, hundreds of kilometers apart. Now, however, Unit 15 was all camped in the middle of the Eastern market district, their fires flickering in the cobbled streets.

"All right," Zabuza said gruffly, glaring down at the assembled teams. "You're about to march on one of the most heavily fortified Hidden Villages in the land. It's been a shitty war and it's about to get even shittier."

The teams shifted, disgruntled. Zabuza shot them a particularly venomous glower. Who the fuck put him up to a motivational speech, anyways? "The point," he snapped, his voice carrying over the shuffling of his unit, "Is that you made it this far. You beat some tough-ass motherfuckers to get here, and now we're at the end of the road. I feel like shit, you feel like shit, guess what? Kiri doesn't care. Are you going to let that stop you?" he demanded.

"No," Special jounin Saeko said serenely from the front of the crowd, but her voice carried. Thank fuck for special jounin Saeko.

"No!" someone yelled from the back, and his team picked it up, then the team next to them as the shouts spread like wildfire until the entire unit was shouting "No!" like some sort of deranged toddler protest.

"You have your orders!" Zabuza called over the noise. "Show these ugly fuckers what Fire is made of!" The chant degenerated into a wordless roar, and Zabuza stepped back, satisfied at a job well done. Motivational speech? Nothing to it.

"Sensei," Temari said, falling into step behind him as he strode away from the organized chaos of his unit mustering out. "You're really bad at that."

Zabuza rolled his eyes as Haku moved up to his other side. "They cheered, they're going to fight, end of story," he growled. "Let's just get to our position."

"Hai," Haku agreed smoothly.

"Why aren't we with your unit, though?" asked Temari. "You're their captain. Shouldn't you be leading?"

Zabuza grunted. "Senju sold me off to Mei as a distraction. Konoha's taking over with the turtle team. If he gets called away, jounin-in-charge Nishigawa's got it." The man might be a stuttering wreck but he could hold his nerve in battle.

"Are we to be part of the distraction as well?" Neji spoke up. Compared to his cousin, he'd bounced back quickly after whatever reprimand Shisui'd dished out.

"Yeah," said Zabuza, coming to a stop at the edge of the market district. Residential quarters sprawled in front of them, and past those, industrial. The dull roar of the reservoir and the dam beyond echoed faintly between the buildings. "We're staying long range for this one," he added. "So you're strictly recon unless you can throw a kunai that far, punk. And keep your cover, damnit."

"Hai," said the Hyuuga brat a little sullenly.

Zabuza turned around to glare him into submission for good measure, then turned briefly towards Haku and Temari. "Haku, do whatever, just don't get caught. Princess, if you decide to go high, try not to make yourself too easy a target."

" _Easy?"_ Temari muttered. "Never."

Because Mei hated him, Michishio and his Unit 9 were in charge of capturing the southern dam. The man was about as thrilled to see Zabuza as he was to see him.

"I was promised a long range specialist," he said flatly, crossing bracered arms across the front of his armor.

"Congrats," said Zabuza, and jerked his head back at the trio lined up behind him in their little wolf masks and wolf cloaks. "You got two. Plus two bonus."

"This is ridiculous," Michishio snapped. "Those aren't tokujo, let alone jounin."

Zabuza gave him a lazy grin. "I'm a jounin," he said. "And you've met Haku, haven't you?"

Haku waved politely and slid a trio of metal senbon out into his hand.

Michishio's lip curled. "Your little pet still follows you around, I see."

"Congratulations on properly using your eyes," Zabuza growled. "Maybe next you can use them to find the stick up your ass."

Michishio took a menacing step forward, but Zabuza was fortunately taller than him and sneered at the effort. "Watch yourself, rotblood," Michishio hissed. "You ran away - "

"You," interrupted Haku icily, as the air temperature plummeted abruptly, "will not speak to Zabuza-san in such a way again."

"Shut your mouth, you mangy cur," Michishio snapped, turning on Haku.

In a flash, Temari had her tessen brandished threateningly, and Neji's feet slid apart slightly into an opening stance, his hand hovering over the hilt of his tanto. Zabuza stepped in front of them, deliberately, and drawled, "Please tell me you're about to make the same mistake Ao did. Make my fucking day."

Haku watched, his face emotionless and very, very cold, as Michishio seethed, lowering the hand he'd raised in Haku's direction.

"Careful, Yuusei," Zabuza said with a sharp-edged grin. "This ain't the Yondaime's military anymore. Better mind your tongue and heel like a good dog before you _embarrass_ Mei."

"You're Senju's bitch, don't even start with me," Michishio spat, but that was a weak comeback and they both knew it. "Just get your little mutts to the south shore teams until I -"

"You don't give me orders," Zabuza interrupted. "You don't give my team orders. What kind of stupid fucker puts a long range team with the point teams? We're going to be on the northern bluff. Try not to get in our way."

Michishio shot him a poisonous glare, snapped, "Fine," and whirled.

"What's his problem?" Temari muttered as the other captain stormed away.

"He was born high caste," Zabuza said, the corner of his mouth curling into an involuntary sneer. "Thinks kekkei-genkai are freaks and that everyone should treat his ass like it's made of gold."

"Isn't he on the wrong side?" Temari said dubiously. "I thought Hanran was the low caste uprising."

Zabuza shrugged. "Lots of people got beef with the Mizukage. Doubt Mei's being picky with who she recruits or why they want to join up."

"He just attempted to have us killed," Neji said. "Would that not be a breach of the alliance?"

"Nah, he's not that dumb," said Zabuza, rolling his eyes. "We're not on the same side anymore. He's basically honor-bound to at least pretend he wants me dead. He hates my guts, but if he were really trying to kill us he wouldn't be so obvious about it. That was basically an olive branch." He glanced back at the three. Haku's face was one of resigned acceptance, but Temari and Neji both had the blank looks of the desperately confused but trying not to show it. Zabuza was beginning to see why Shisui had said they were not ready for politics.

The jounin in charge at the northern bluff glanced up at their approach, gave Zabuza a solemn once over, and said, "Oh. It's you."

"Hn," Zabuza agreed. "The hell happened to your hair?"

Massao reached up with his free hand absently, running his hand through the short purple spikes shorn much closer to his scalp than his typical unruly mane. "I ran into Kaibun during the battle at Yonaguni," he sighed. "She almost took my head off with my hair."

"Damn," Zabuza muttered. "She still fighting with the loyalists?"

"They've got her brother," Massao pointed out. He turned back to squinting at the top of the dam in the distance. "Heard you were dead," he said after a thoughtful pause. "Believed it, til reports said some maniac with Kubikiribocho showed up on the Jurojinmaru."

Zabuza grunted. "Always wanted to sink a warship."

"You and me both," said Massao, those miserable months during their first deployment aboard the Daikokumaru haunting his voice. The first time they'd dragged Zabuza aboard a ship and chained him to the benches at the bottommost hold, it had been Massao who tempered his yet untamed fury, who weathered the punishments Zabuza earned them both, who taught him to bite his tongue and tamp down his rage until it simmered and smoldered instead of bubbling over. Zabuza pretty damn sure he'd have gone insane down in that darkness if not for Massao. "You sure it's sunk?"

"Bottom of the ocean," Zabuza confirmed. "Hey, you remember Haku, right?"

"Who?" Massao said blankly, then, when Zabuza waved at Haku to take off the mask, "oh. Your kid."

Haku dipped his head politely, if a little warily. He had only ever met Massao in passing and didn't trust many people; Zabuza both approved of and encouraged this mindset.

"We're long range support for the assault today," Zabuza said. "Gods know your squids could use someone who can actually do some damage."

The jounin eyed him dubiously. "Long range? You?"

Zabuza rolled his eyes.

"Well, okay," said Massao, sounding unconvinced. "We're supposed to be getting some mercenary long range specialist here too."

Zabuza rolled his eyes again. "Massao, _I'm_ the mercenary long range specialist."

He frowned. "You're not Hanran?"

"Nah," Zabuza said carelessly. "Shank the Mizukage and I'm done." It'd be off to the land of emoting tree huggers for him and Haku, unfortunately.

"Hm," was all Massao said to that. "Are these yours too?" he flapped his hand at Neji and Temari, who had watched their interaction curiously but quietly.

"I guess," Zabuza said unenthusiastically, and caught the sand princess rolling her eyes discreetly. "Rei's the one with the fan. Long range ninjutsu. Ni's a sensor."

"Okay," said Massao almost disinterestedly after a pause. Massao was one of those types that would forget to respond in a conversation because he didn't think it was important, but he was a good enough strategist to claw his way up Kiri's cutthroat command chain despite his blood - almost as rare as a low caste brute making it into the ranks of the Kiri no Shinobigatana Shichinin Shuu, its elite Seven Swordsmen. "We've a couple mid and close range specialists, but there's six teams here who are mostly long range."

Massao's teams showed the wear of war in their battered flak jackets, ripped clothes, and jittery eyes. Zabuza was not impressed. "That's it? Six teams?"

"Well," said Massao. "Yeah. Half the unit is still coming up from the Rishiri Islands. They're supposed to get here by sunset, but - " he shrugged a shoulder. " - will they actually?"

Zabuza snorted. "I take it Michishio won't be waiting for them past golden hour," he said dryly.

"Nope." Massao squinted at his ragtag teams. "We'll make do," he said with very little conviction.

"What's golden hour?" asked Temari from behind him.

Massao made no inclination that he would answer. Past experience told Zabuza that if he ignored the question, the next iteration would be louder and slower, as if the questioner were interviewing some doddery old sack of bones, so he said, "Hour before sunset. Light's at our back and in their eyes - best time to launch an assault, as long as you can get it done by dawn."

"If everyone knows it's the best time for an attack, won't they be expecting it?" Temari pressed.

"They already know we're coming," Zabuza said, eyeing the distant flow of water over the edge of the dam. "May as well do it when the sun's in our favor."

The battle broke almost hesitantly, half a day later, when Massao meandered his way through a series of hand seals, muttered, "Suiton: Mizu Kamikiri," and borrowed nearly half the water in the reservoir to send a wave scything towards the dam. It was countered, of course, smoothed into a gentle tide by the time it reached the wall, but not before the close-range assault troops at either side inched forward. The ground rumbled under their feet as someone on the northern flank set off a tag. On the south side, light winked off metal as shinobi hurled shuriken at the guard towers.

There was another lull as each side regarded the other warily. "That's it?" asked Temari suspiciously, hands propped on her hips.

The reservoir abruptly exploded, pellets of water breaking from the surface and shooting up towards the advancing shinobi. Three of Massao's shinobi reacted just as quickly, slamming their hands into the ground as they muttered under their breaths in unison, and dirt walls reared up on either side to shield the teams.

"Hey, punk, where are their offensive ninjutsu users?" Zabuza asked as Massao trotted off to coordinate the defense of the short-range teams.

"Towers," Neji answered. "Second, fifth, sixth, and seventh."

"Hn," said Zabuza. "All right, kid, you're up."

"Hai," Haku said, and twisted one hand into a seal as he drew a brace of senbon with the other. An ice mirror formed in the air before him, and then another some twenty meters out and forty up. He stepped through the closest mirror daintily and vanished.

The suiton jutsu from the dam paused as their wielders considered Haku's mirror, floating high above the water. A blur of light hissed towards the second guard tower as Haku hurled his senbon. Zabuza squinted at the figures buzzing around the tower.

"Ducked," Neji reported. "Barely."

Haku re-emerged from the bottom mirror as a kunai clattered harmlessly off the other side and said, unruffled, "Zabuza-san, do you mind if I borrow Ni-kun?"

"Keep him, for all I care," Zabuza said indifferently. Less of a chance of him running off if he was stranded in Haku's weird mirror dimension or whatever it was.

Neji, prissy clan baby that he was, was undoubtedly offended at his implied lack of importance, but took Haku's hand anyways to be pulled into the mirror.

The ground rattled again; the north shore lit in a fiery blast, and shinobi spilled down the sides of the banks, skidding and sliding down their uneven surfaces onto the water's surface. Jutsu and kunai hurled by the shinobi manning the dam defenses followed the teams down as they scattered. The water cascading down from the lip of the dam seethed and writhed as shinobi fought to wrest control of it from each other.

Zabuza was not actually a long-range specialist - which everyone involved knew and politely chose to ignore - he was a Swordsman, and could maybe considered mid-range with a stretch. He itched for Kubikiribocho's familiar heft in his grip, but dismissed it with a jerk of his head. Time enough for that later, when all the grunts had finished throwing themselves at the dam's defenses.

"What're you waiting for, princess, a personal invitation?" Zabuza growled at Temari, whose neck craned upwards as she watched Haku build a third and fourth mirror.

She tilted her head just enough to give him a sly smile and said, "Yes, Sensei."

Little shit. "Go, then," Zabuza snapped. "You let them hit you and you'll be running laps until you cough your lungs up."

"Hai," said Temari with relish, and swung her fan off her back, snapping it open and leaping up in one smooth movement. She landed on its open face in a crouch, and as it began to tumble down, blurred through hand seals to unleash a fuuton that swept her and her battle fan up in air to join the rest of her team. When Zabuza had stolen the tessen to begin with, he'd been thinking that she could use it and her enthusiastic ferocity to bludgeon her enemy. All the more power to her if she wanted to use it to make like a butterfly.

The water frothed between the ragged line the Hanran held halfway across the reservoir and the waterfall down the front of the dam. Choppy waves and miniature tidepools betrayed the chakra that surged beneath the surface, the deceptively unnoticeable battles for dominance. Zabuza shook out his chakra, letting it ripple free from his core and sink into his muscles. He had the blood of berserkers, the same thirst for battle but with absolute control. Zabuza was designed to wield water and bred for combat, and Kiri was about to regret that.

Zabuza wasn't particularly dramatic, but he was a godsdamned monster and this fucking village was long overdue for its reckoning.

He strode languidly off the edge of the bluff, dropping abruptly and landing solidly on the water. His arrival sent a wave rippling over the surface, disrupting the scuffle in no-man's land. The mice had fought to a standstill; time for the cats to come out to play.

A kunai shot towards him, and he tipped his head lazily to avoid it. His hands formed seals and he moulded his chakra, sinking it into the water and wresting it from the petty struggles of the genin and chuunin as it answered his command. It rose as a great dragon, its head rearing up from the surface as it ripped its way free from the depths next to Zabuza, and he hollered, "Whichever one of you sad fucks thinks he can take me on, show your ugly mug!"

A shinobi jumped out of the fifth guard tower seconds before his dragon lunged. The suiton crashed straight through one of the cutouts in the wall, shearing itself off at the sides where its body was too thick to pass through. Dulled by the seals of the guard tower and the defensive jutsu of its shinobi, the tower did not fall, but a spray of water and rubble from the sides told him it had not gone unscathed.

Lightning crackled from the damaged tower, and only a hasty douton from one of Massao's men kept the front line from being fried alive. Douton, unfortunately, was weak against raiton; the one hit, and it crumbled like a sand castle.

"Oi, Haku," said Zabuza, not bothering to raise his voice. "Between you and the punk, get me the name of whoever's running that defense." Zabuza could pull off a damn good fuuton, if he said so himself, and so he sent a flurry of crescent wind blades scything towards the ominous crackle of electricity. The lightning dissipated as the fuuton carved deep furrows into the stone walls. An enterprising Hanran team took the opportunity to launch first exploding tags, then themselves, towards the crippled tower. They didn't make it far; closer to the tower, the loyalists controlled the falling water, and a brutal suiton sent them tumbling back to the rest of the teams. Too hasty - this would be a long battle unless he could draw out the big players.

Haku dropped down onto the mirror that formed beside Zabuza as he squinted towards the towers. "Based on physical description and the elemental jutsu used, I believe the jounin in charge is Soseku Fuhen," he said. "Ni-kun reported the man has a pair of sai in his belt."

Soseku Fuhen - elite jounin and major asshat who believed wholeheartedly that low caste shinobi were the dregs of humanity. Zabuza, obviously, loathed the pompous fucker. Soseku had graduated in the class after Zabuza's massacre. He had also been passed over both as Kushimaru's successor to the Nuibari blade and as Raiga's successor to the Kiba despite his prowess with kenjutsu and raiton jutsu, over which Zabuza was still infinitely smug.

Zabuza could needle him. Man was prouder than a monarch stag, which, admittedly, was a common trait in elite shinobi. "All right," he said, waving a hand dismissively at Haku. "Back to it. Leave Soseku to me."

"Hai," Haku agreed, and let himself drop into the mirror.

"Hey, Fuhen!" Zabuza bellowed, his voice carrying over the incessant clash of metal on metal. "Anyone give you a real sword yet, or are you still waving around those pigstickers?" He didn't think twice about unslinging Kubikiribocho from his back. Massao had the long-rangers covered, and if he could lure Soseku out of his little princess tower, Zabuza would be better at close range.

Kunai and jutsu flew fast and thick between the base of the dam and the towers, because a vertical charge was difficult at best and nigh impossible at worst without incapacitating those who guarded the top. Haku could make it up, certainly, with the protection his ice granted, but Haku was one shinobi, and Zabuza wasn't quite ready to risk him in a kamikaze blitz.

Temari's fan dipped sharply, and she spiralled down under a hail of suiton and shuriken. She landed in the far side of the reservoir and fired back a gale force fuuton with a savage swipe of the tessen that sent the weaponry hurtling back towards their owners. Even grounded, she was fine. There were far more tempting targets, like the teams currently snaking their way up the reservoir wall beneath the unrelenting deluge.

No sign of Soseku yet, though. Zabuza cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "You know why Raiga wouldn't take you, Fuhen? Said you can't fight your way out of a goat farm. He called you a soggy noodle with less potential than a halfwit minnow!"

That was a lie. Raiga had said jack shit about Soseku because he'd barely known he existed. But if Zabuza kept spilling stories and lies, at some point, Soseku'd have to choose between losing face and defending his honor, and Zabuza was pretty sure he'd choose the latter. High caste shinobi were funny like that.

"Does your footwork still make you look like a lame duck? Do you still fail missions because you can't tell fresh fish from rotton? How many superiors did you have to kill to make captain?" Zabuza bellowed. "Yashahiro and Wataru, anybody else?"

There was a noticeable lull in the melee - incredulity and shock painted across the faces of both Hanran and loyalists. Murdering one's comrades on the way to the top wasn't uncommon - still illegal, if caught - but killing someone above one's station? Cardinal sin number one, after being born low caste. Zabuza suppressed a smirk as a tiny figure shoved his way to the edge of the center tower battlements.

"What do you think you're doing?" Michishio grated from behind him.

"Drawing the bastard out," Zabuza replied, waggling his fingers in a cheeky wave up at Soseku. "He comes out, towers are more vulnerable."

"He's not that big of a fool," Michishio said derisively, shadowing Zabuza as he strode forwards. "You should be with the long-distance teams."

Zabuza rolled his eyes, and hollered, "Hey, Fuhen, remember that mission with the whorehouse in Awaji - "

And that, apparently, was all the abuse Soseku could take, because he leapt straight off the edge of the tower, skidding down the waterfall as water blades distorted the spray around him. Zabuza bared his teeth in a vicious grin and flipped through the hand signs, burying his chakra into the reservoir around him so it reared up to meet the charging jounin. "Fool for his pride," he said smugly.

Michishio grunted. He drew his katana, letting the tip drop to an easy stance. "Disgrace," was all he said, soft and venomous.

Soseku hit the surface in a massive plume of water - the remnants of his and Zabuza's jutsu both. He drew his two sai theatrically as he stalked forwards, waves cresting at his feet.

"Watch for his raiton," warned Zabuza, shooting the approaching shinobi a lazy grin. He flipped Kubikiribocho easily in his hand, and his smile widened as Soseku's eyes slitted in rage. "Come in after me. I'll hold his sai if I can."

"Don't give me orders, rotblood," Michishio retorted. "You'll hold his sai if you're not a complete waste of space."

As good as a godsdamned treaty. Look at them, playing well together. Zabuza would generously wait to cut his head off for that slur later.

"You're an ornery - " The back of his neck prickled. He paused, the chakra roiling under his skin, and turned abruptly back towards the coastline, and at that moment the lighthouse sirens began to wail.

He didn't need the sirens. Even from so far out, the hulking shapes of the missing warships were unmistakable. The pieces clicked; the godsdamned trap snapped closed. The loyalists too had waited for golden hour.

 _Shit._ The only troops along the coast were those of Mei's camps, on the bluff with the lighthouse, and the Ebisumaru and Hoteimaru anchored in the harbor, none of which could stand up to four fully crewed warships all attacking at the same time.

Michishio cursed under his breath, low and vicious, without taking his eyes off the now gloating Soseku. The rest of his Unit 9, coming up from Rishiri, were probably dead.

"Those bastards can't make land, or we're all fucked," said Zabuza.

Michishio grunted agreement. "We don't have enough forces there," he said. "Our intel put the ships too far away to lend assistance so quickly."

Zabuza snorted. "Your intel fucking sucks," he spat. "Take care of this mess, I'll go deal with the bloody ships."

"Your orders were to remain here," the older man fired back immediately.

"I give my own orders," Zabuza sneered reflexively. "You can't tell me to do shit. I'm reassigning myself."

Michishio flicked a sideways glance. "We're at half-strength and you're leaving."

Zabuza jerked a thumb back at the advancing ships. "Rock," he said, then pointed at the dam and Soseku. "Hard place."

Michishio made a derisive noise in his throat. "Running and leaving everyone else to clean up your mess again," he growled without looking at Zabuza, bringing his sword up in a graceful loop to point unerringly at Soseku.

Zabuza scoffed. "Fuck you. You better not let him catch you, old man. You'll never live down the humiliation."

Michishio twitched. "Old," he repeated under his breath as Zabuza slung Kubikiribocho over his shoulder and stepped back. Shinobi over thirty all had the same trigger.

Zabuza eyed Soseku reluctantly even as he let his chakra settle from its threatening roil. He'd so been looking forward to knocking the arrogant prick down a couple dozen pegs, but the loud jinchuuriki brat and his team were still aboard the Hoteimaru. That was the battle Zabuza needed to be at. "Haku!" he barked, striding abruptly back towards the far shore of the reservoir.

"Don't turn your back on me!" Soseku's suiton ripped towards him, but he Michishio countered with his own, darting to meet the other jounin.

Haku fell neatly into step with him, the mirror forming and crumbling as soon as he pulled free of it. "Ni-kun reports four hostile ships and upwards of six hundred shinobi crewing them," he said without prompting. "All four are approaching the harbor mouth, two from the north and two from the south."

"Fuck!" Zabuza snarled under his breath. "What's the status on our forces?"

"We don't have sufficient manpower on site," Haku said. "The Hoteimaru and Ebisumaru both have skeleton crews, and the Hoteimaru also houses Team Byakko and a number of wounded. Mei-san's command base at the lighthouse has twenty teams currently stationed there, but as Mei-san is currently overseeing the battle under the main pass - "

"Get the others here," Zabuza cut him off. He didn't need to hear about the complete lack of a viable defense at what was supposed to be their back lines.

A small black shape zipped through the air towards him, and Zabuza nearly went for his sword before recognizing it as the freaky kid's ink construct. "Damnit," he muttered under his breath as he fumbled out a blank scroll. He snapped it open with barely a second to spare, and the bird splattered itself into writhing lines of ink. _Four Unit 15 teams to harbor. Not Juu. Half Unit 13 to 87-13 sewers. Not Uchiha._ _Kasasagi to 87-13 sewers. Half Unit 7 to harbor. Not Higata. Unit 17 to harbor. With Yanagi T._ Yanagi the younger was a kenjutsu specialist and melee fighter, and a budding strategist, but Zabuza hadn't known her to whip out any army-killer jutsu. Who the fuck decided she was the best one to lead the harbor defense?

Except that all the battles they fought right now were pretty fucking critical and Tsukimi's unit could buy enough time for the other units to dig in footholds before sending back reinforcements. Not much of Unit 17 would be standing afterwards, but hey, price of war and all that.

The harbor needed someone who could fuck shit up _now,_ before the assigned teams mobilized, because the Hoteimaru and Ebisumaru were sitting ducks.

On cue, Haku pulled Temari and Neji out of a mirror a little breathlessly as far above, the rest of his ice shattered under a barrage of kunai and one well-placed fuuton.

"Are we leaving?" Temari demanded immediately.

"Me and Haku, yes. You, no," Zabuza snapped. Temari scowled, and Zabuza jerked his chin back towards the dam. "Do they look like they can spare another long range specialist?" He did not need to look back to know that they did not. The roar of suiton temporarily deafened him, and below it, the din of metal on metal as Soseku duelled Michishio. A string of explosions rattled the very air, urgency spurring on the Hanran teams, and the three genin scrambled for balance as the water beneath their feet surged abruptly.

"You're clear for whatever combat you want, both of you, but get yourselves killed and I'll make you regret it. Hold this line, princess, you hear me?" Zabuza snapped over the noise, and Temari, her eyes wide in her face, nodded. "Whatever the fuck happens, you hold this godsdamned line."

"We will not fail," Neji added, and the veins spiderwebbing his face from his doujutsu lent him a ferocity he normally lacked.

"Get back to it, then," Zabuza growled. "Haku, get me to the harbor."

Haku's hand came up, and then he was tugging Zabuza into the mirror that appeared in their path. A flash of light and the dizzying sensation of moving at an incredible speed, and then they were lunging out of the second mirror at the base of the lighthouse.

The teams scattered on the bluff whirled at their sudden appearance, but no one tried attacking so Zabuza counted it as a win. "Who's in charge here?" he demanded immediately. "What's your defense strategy?"

Where Hanabi-ha had a high number of Command Corps shinobi, loyal to the Sandaime Hokage and his presumed successor, the Kiri Hanran was an uprising of the lower castes, of which there were precious few officers and even fewer trained in strategy. The jounin in charge at the lighthouse was actually a harried tokujo. There was no defense strategy besides 'wait for backup.'

Zabuza glared over the edge of the cliff at the warships approaching from the north, casting imposing shadows against the setting sun. "Haku," he growled. "Make it hail."

Haku's face could have been carved from ice. He raised one hand in a seal, and the temperature plummeted.

"Tell the crews of the Hoteimaru and Ebisumaru to barricade the harbor mouth," Zabuza ordered the tokujo. If all went to plan, their crews would only have to deal with the ships approaching from the south. "I'm going to buy time. If they get too close, bring down this entire cliff on them."

"W-with the lighthouse?" the tokujo asked.

"Everything," agreed Zabuza.

The skies darkened abruptly as Haku's chakra swelled. His face did not change from its blank mask, but with a deafening crash, ice poured from the heavens, sharp-edged and glinting like glass.

"Holy shit!" some chuunin yelped from behind him, but Zabuza ignored him.

He crouched, bunching his chakra in his legs. "Haku, on me," he growled, and leapt off the cliff.

He plummeted like a stone, and the hail curved around him obligingly as the wind roared in his ears. He landed solidly on the quarter deck of the Bishamonmaru, and scythed Kubikiribocho in a wide arc. Zabuza bared his teeth in a feral grin at the shinobi who caught the blade on his own katana. "Hey, captain," he said with probably too much manic glee. "Permission to come aboard?"

Every warship captain was a stone-cold, ruthless son of a bitch, except the former captain of the Ebisumaru, who was a straight up bitch, and Arihiro was no different. He had been an upper caste genin on this ship, once upon a time, and for that Zabuza automatically hated his guts. "Don't hold your breath," he said coolly, and sent Zabuza skidding backwards with a chakra-enhanced shove.

Zabuza let the momentum carry him into a backwards flip over the heads of the two chuunin who charged up from behind, and a rapid suiton sent them flying over the rail. Down on the main deck, Haku darted among the hailstones that rained down thick and fast and sent senbon hissing unerringly into their targets.

Arihiro spat a flurry of water bullets that Zabuza lurched to dodge, then charged in their wake as Zabuza brought Kubikiribocho to bear.

"Hey," said Zabuza conversationally, as he attempted an enthusiastic beheading that was unfortunately blocked. "You seen Yagura recently? How is he, stressed?"

"Yondaime-sama has dealt with traitors before," Arihiro said, spinning his sword in his hand to get a better grip. His skin glowed with the jutsu shielding him from the punishing hail, but Haku's bloodline was relentless and Zabuza could already see the bloom of bruises on the other shinobi's uncovered arms. "This is no different."

"He's lost over half his shinobi," Zabuza drawled, and spat a lightning-fast fuuton that nearly took off Arihiro's head and did send half the railing into the ocean. "You think it's occurred to him that he's doing something wrong?"

"The only ones doing something wrong are the ones betraying the oaths they swore," Arihiro retorted, and hurled a kunai thrown underhanded that bit deep into Zabuza's flak jacket.

Zabuza didn't pause his charge, barreling straight into the other jounin and pinning him against the mizzenmast. "From the time I could walk, I served Kiri," he snarled into Arihiro's face, the blood roaring in his ears even above the relentless pound of hail. "I bled, I endured, I killed for Yagura. What the fuck has the Mizukage done for Kiri?"

Arihiro stamped hard on his foot and kicked out, knocking Zabuza far enough back to bring his katana up once again. "Which of us hasn't? You're supposed to be a shinobi," he said contemptuously. "You owe everything to Kiri - you were one of her favored, despite your blood, and you threw it all away. The Mizukage is the foundation of the village, and you were sworn to him."

Zabuza bared his teeth. "Maybe I broke my oaths," he conceded. "But all you little sardines are sailing a sinking ship. Kiri's broken, and Yagura sure as hell won't gonna fix it."

Arihiro laughed abruptly. "Have you, of all people, gone soft?" he asked incredulously. "Kiri is built on strength. The strong survive, and the weak are culled."

Zabuza grunted, swinging his sword up onto his shoulder. "That why he jumps at rabbits and massacres entire clans in the night?" Chakra roiled in his chest as he sped through the seals, and a great dragon reared out of the water, dwarfing the warship.

Arihiro eyed the suiton with contempt. "Try all you want, this ship is unsinkable," he said.

"Funny, that's not what Raijuu said," mused Zabuza offhandedly. "And I'd like to see this thing float with a shitton of water in it and everyone belowdeck drowned."

The dragon pounced. Arihiro lunged.

With a muted hiss, a pair of senbon sank into Arihiro's throat, and he keeled over gently, mouth and eyes both parted in surprise. The dragon struck home, pouring relentlessly into the hatch leading belowdeck.

Haku slipped out of the hail and said with far more trepidation than any true warrior, "Zabuza-san, are you really going to drown everyone on board?"

Warrior, no, but Haku was Zabuza's weapon first. Zabuza squinted through the curtain of ice. "Go to the Daikokumaru," he ordered. "Keep them busy until I get there." True to form, Haku dipped his head and vanished into the ice without further protest.

The ship was not a bucket in which one could drown unwanted cats or tiresome children. It was a sieve, and even as Zabuza's suiton flooded its depths, shinobi spilled out of the hatches lining the sides of the ship. Zabuza gritted his teeth as they surfaced and flitted out over the water towards the coast, but there wasn't much he could do about it if he wanted to take the ship out of commission. Beneath his feet, the deck of the ship groaned, dipping a little closer to the water level.

The back of his neck prickled. Zabuza jerked sideways as Arihiro slashed his katana through the space where his head had been, and Haku's senbon clattered to the deck as the douton bunshin lost its shape. "Gods, just die!" Zabuza snarled, straining to keep his grip on his suiton as he feinted left and dodged right. The ship creaked and dropped again, the water from Zabuza's dragon sloshing from wall to wall.

Arihiro's face had gone completely still, his eyes narrow and intent as he pivoted gracefully on the ball of his foot and pounced once again.

"For fuck's sake," Zabuza gritted out, backpedaling. Fuck this fucking jutsu that needed two fucking hands and most of his fucking concentration making him give fucking ground to a subpar fucking kenjutsu wielder. Also, fuck this guy.

Arihiro executed a quick backslash, and the tip of his katana ripped through Zabuza's flak jacket and scored a line at his ribs. Zabuza's chakra wavered and he dropped the jutsu. The Bishamonmaru's deck was nearly level with the ocean around them; that was enough. "That's it, motherfucker," he snarled, ignoring the fire that burned a long line along his side as he grabbed for Kubikiribocho and swung in a single motion.

Arihiro deflected the blow with a frankly arrogant slash of his sword, and his hands blurred around the hilt; he spat a boiling blast of water, and Zabuza ducked behind the flat of Kubikiribocho.

A lithe figure leapt over the railing of the ship, and Yanagi the younger, her face hidden by a battered dog mask, sprang at Arihiro's exposed back with her katana leading her wakizashi. He twisted and caught both the blades on his, but the force of the blow sent him skidding back along the slick deck.

Zabuza seized Kubikiribocho's hilt and lunged. Arihiro's eyes darted to the side and narrowed as he jerked his katana up sharply, throwing off both of Tsukimi's swords and leaping away before Zabuza's blade cleaved the air where he had stood. Zabuza bared his teeth. "I don't need your help," he growled out of the side of his mouth at Tsukimi.

Yanagi the younger snorted. "You nearly let a hundred loyalists hit the coast. Also, you're bleeding."

 _This wasn't even Zabuza's post._ Zabuza sneered, hefting his sword back up onto his shoulder. "I wasn't fighting then and it would've been two hundred plus if I left it to that tokujo. Your unit on them?" He squinted through the curtain of ice, but he didn't have the white-eyes and could see jack shit.

"Yeah," said Tsukimi, distracted, as Arihiro jabbed experimentally to test her guard. She parried indolently with her wakizashi, swinging her katana up with her other hand to level it unerringly at the other jounin. "He can't take both of us," she said confidently, slinking around to circle Arihiro with careful steps.

Zabuza grinned a sharp-edged smile. "He can't even take one of us," he corrected, and lunged.

Arihiro leapt straight up, corkscrewing through the air as Tsukimi's blades flashed after him. He twisted midair, and Zabuza's blade tore through only cloth as Arihiro's hands blurred through a set of seals.

"Oh, crap," Tsukimi muttered under her breath, and a coil of rope took Arihiro's douton for her. Zabuza bared his teeth and swung Kubikiribocho, batting the jutsu away from him. Tsukimi reappeared in a crouch beside him and sprang, following Arihiro up in the air as the other shinobi brandished his blade once more.

Arihiro vanished in a shunshin before Tsukimi's katana could touch his, and Zabuza, having sparred far too frequently with a squirrelly little Konoha bastard and anticipating where this sad imitation would show up, whirled, pouncing at Arihiro as he reappeared at the base of the mizzenmast. Arihiro's emotionless mask cracked as Kubikiribocho bit deeply into his side just under his ribs; for just a second, his face contorted in pain and rage.

Tsukimi spat a raiton, but scorched only the deck of the ship as Arihiro vanished in a hiss of water. Tsukimi spun incredulously when he didn't reappear, blades at the ready.

Zabuza jabbed Kubikiribocho into the deck within easy reach and stretched out his senses. "Blast," he muttered sourly. "He's gone."

"He left the ship and his men?" Tsukimi demanded breathlessly.

"He's a strategist. If he's injured and outclassed, he'd cut his losses," said Zabuza, already turning away. "There'll be hell to pay, but if he has valuable intel he won't lose his rank." Or, like a master tactician, he'd hole up on an island to lick his wounds and wait to see who came out on top. On their starboard side, the other ship - the Daikokumaru - loomed against the blazing remnants of the setting sun.

Ah, the Daikokumaru. The oldest of the seven Kiri warships, the biggest, the bulkiest. The great beast forged in the dark days of Kirigakure's founding, with which the not-yet upper caste clans of Mizu no Kuni would subjugate their little corner of their world. When they dragged Zabuza into her hold over a decade ago, he could smell the blood and sweat soaked into the wood from those they'd broken before him.

It did not dawn on Zabuza as to why he could suddenly see the Daikokumaru until his eyes fell on the limp figure impaled on the other ship's main mast and registered, almost simultaneously, the lack of hail.

Zabuza tasted iron in his mouth. He pulsed his chakra once, twice for a genjutsu, and when the sight did not change, strained his hearing across the gap for a heartbeat, his eyes for any trace of movement.

In an uncharacteristically hushed voice, Tsukimi said from behind him, "Isn't that your apprentice?"

Zabuza yanked Kubikiribocho out of the wooden deck, even as his attention narrowed on the hulking figure strolling across the Daikokumaru's deck towards Haku's body. "I'm going to kill that son of a bitch," he said plainly, even as the ugly little thing that curled around his ribcage lit up with incandescent rage.

Zabuza's sire had been a berserker, mad with bloodlust when he charged into battle. But even as Zabuza's chakra ramped up, coalescing into a shroud that burned through his veins and set his blood singing, he retained the ice-cold clarity of his dam.

He crossed the gap between the two ships in a chakra-aided bound, landing behind the Daikokumaru's captain, who turned indifferently towards Zabuza. Zabuza spared him barely a glance, because Haku -

Haku's mask had been knocked askew and his eyes were closed, hair hanging about his face. Frost dusted his eyelashes. A trickle of blood dripped from his mouth, vividly crimson against his pale skin, and except for the hands clutched limply around the jagged wood speared through his abdomen, he might have been leaning against the mizzenmast. He was still. His chest did not rise; no pulse beat in his throat.

Zabuza turned away. Haku was the best thing that had ever happened to Zabuza, and Zabuza had dragged him in and out of Kirigakure, halfway across the mainland Continent, and to his shitty fucking death.

Funkazan-taichou said disinterestedly, "This one yours? You did a shit job with him, boy. He shouldn't have tried close-range combat when he was already spending chakra on a ninjutsu like that hail, even if it was his kekkei-genkai."

"Shut up," growled Zabuza. "You don't get to talk about him."

When Zabuza had been a new genin, Funkazan-taichou had been the captain of the Daikokumaru for nearly a decade, and though Zabuza's kill count had already been in the triple digits, Funkazan-taichou had been the biggest, most terrifying thing in the world. At nine years old, he had hated and feared this man the most. Now, though, Zabuza's eyes caught the deepened lines in Funkazan-taichou's face and thought _old. Slow. Lessened muscle mass. Vulnerable. About to fucking die._

Because Zabuza was going to kill the bastard or die trying.

Haku had left his mark on the man with ice and with senbon; Zabuza recognized the slight drag of Funkazan-taichou's left arm, from a senbon that had struck a nerve bundle in his shoulder, the wheeze in each breath he took from another that had slipped past his defenses into his chest. Zabuza categorized them clinically, and his focus narrowed to his heartbeat thumping rhythmically in his ears, the rasp of his breath in his throat, and the pulse throbbing faintly in Funkazan-taichou's throat. He settled his grip on Kubikiribocho, letting his hand slide into that familiar position on its hilt, shifted his weight on the balls of his feet, and lunged.

If Funkazan-taichou was taken aback by the speed or ferocity of his attack, the strength of his parry made no indication of it. Kubikiribocho skidded off the flat of his katana with an unearthly screech, and Zabuza caught the man's lightning-fast backslash on the metal plate of his glove as he brought his broadsword back around for a second strike that forced Funkazan-taichou to jump backwards or risk a beheading.

Zabuza's chakra licked hungrily against his skin, demanding _blood_ and _fear_ and Zabuza thought _yes, why not?_ Haku's had been an untarnished soul; for his memory, Zabuza would burn down an entire army, beginning with _this fucking bastard._

Funkazan-taichou's chakra surged, and Zabuza leapt up the main mast to the yardarm as water drills spiraled out of the ocean, crashing across the face of the deck. He dropped like a stone as they slammed back into the waves, letting gravity reassert itself as he fell. He gathered his chakra and moulded it with familiar signs. "Kirigakure no jutsu," he growled, and plummeted into the welcoming white blanket of his mist.

Funkazan-taichou might be a predator, but in this muffled world, Zabuza was the hunter. No one had ever been more adept at killing in the mist than Zabuza, and that wasn't arrogance, that was a fucking fact. Zabuza could hear Funkazan's heartbeat, steady even as he shifted into a more defensive position. Zabuza ghosted behind him on silent feet and struck. Almost too late - far too early - Funkazan-taichou spun, and his katana slammed against Kubikiribocho, but Zabuza had put a helluva lot of force behind that strike and Funkazan-taichou skidded backwards, only the tightening around his eyes betraying the concession.

Zabuza's chakra burned through him and his body responded. He took the ground Funkazan-taichou gave up, crowding inside the man's reach and slamming into him with a sudden burst of speed to pin him against the ship's railing with the flat of Kubikiribocho. "Getting slow, old man," he snarled.

"You always had such limited thinking, boy," Funkazan-taichou said, and an icy-hot line swept down Zabuza's back as Zabuza twisted, turning the fatal blow into a merely irritating one, one for which the pain faded fast under the roiling rage of his chakra. The Funkazan-taichou before him melted into water, swarming up Zabuza's arm and gluing him fast to the railing, and Zabuza swung around with a snarl to face Funkazan-taichou, who stood with a sword dripping blood - Zabuza's blood - and his face a mask of cold indifference.

Zabuza was pretty shit at genjutsu, but he pulled one off anyways as he growled, "Think again, fossil," and wormed a layer of water between his skin and the trap-jutsu and yanked himself free.

Funkazan-taichou jerked, just for a moment, as his katana came up to block the blow of a mizu bunshin that wasn't there. Zabuza was known for multi-clone combat, but genjutsu? Unheard of.

Zabuza lunged, Kubikiribocho forgotten at his side, and vicious satisfaction curled in his chest as Funkazan-taichou's eyes widened in alarm. His katana tore through Zabuza's flak jacket like it was tissue paper, but Zabuza sank every fucking one of his sharp fucking teeth into Funkazan-taichou's throat and jerked his head back sharply.

Flesh and cartilage rent with a wet rip. Funkazan-taichou's arterial blood sprayed Zabuza full in the face as he shoved his old captain back savagely.

Nobody could walk away from a throat torn out so thoroughly. Zabuza bared bloody teeth as Funkazan-taichou's body hit the deck with a dull thud and snarled, "Keep a seat warm for me in hell, fucker." The rage that blazed through him so intensely it hurt faded to a triumphant smoulder, and then, as he watched the blood bubble out of Funkazan-taichou's throat, to a strange hollowness as his battle-rage waned with his hold over the mist.

There was still a battle to be fought atop the waves, as Tsukimi's Unit 17 fended off the crews of the Bishamonmaru and the Daikokumaru and the captain herself dueled two jounin Zabuza recognized as the First Mates of each. Zabuza stalked out onto the prow of the Daikokumaru, anchoring his feet with chakra as it bucked against the waves.

In true shinobi form, the battlefield was a mess. Scattered across the deck of the Daikokumaru and the bay, clusters of shinobi hurled jutsu and kunai, their hair plastered against their faces as they bent the water into drills and swamps and dripping beasts. There were dark shapes bobbing in the water, because fighting on top of water was as unforgiving as Kiri and the ocean itself, and Haku was still fucking tacked against the fucking mizzenmast of this hell-ship because Zabuza told him to _keep them busy until he got there_ and Zabuza was suddenly sick of it all, this petty struggle for the kage - no, fuck that, the entire godsdamned society - tearing the village apart.

Zabuza's chakra surged. He had enough fury left for this. He spit Funkazan-taichou's blood to the side and said, without raising his voice, "Yanagi, get your people clear. You have thirty seconds."

The middle of a pitched battle was a piss-poor place to invent a new jutsu, but Zabuza cannibalized half the seals from Haku's favorite - what had been Haku's favorite Sensatsu Suishou water senbon, and his own Suiton: Suiryuudan and a fucking Tiger seal or two for extra power. Distantly, out of the corner of his eyes, he could see the Hanabi-ha teams pulling out of their battles hard and fleeing back towards the shore, the loyalist teams scattering in their wake suspiciously, but too suspicious to follow. Yanagi the younger had a strange amount of confidence in Zabuza's ability to take on a fucking army but Zabuza was beyond caring, particularly when some of the bolder chuunin turned towards his lone silhouette on the prow of of the Daikokumaru.

Zabuza gorged the ocean with his chakra and dragged up from the deep a winged creature with great scything wings and called it _Suiton: Fuyudori_ \- the winter bird.

And Fuyudori was a fucking beast, wild and graceful as it drank hungrily at his chakra. It spiraled into the air, trailing feathers of ocean foam and then crashed down on the advancing teams.

Once, Zabuza had stood alone on the raging ocean in the middle of a typhoon - not for a mission, but returning from a solo assassination, one of his first. He had seen the gathering of the clouds, tasted the charge in the air, and, inexplicably, he stopped. The winds screamed as the waves swelled, throwing him about even as he fought to keep his footing on the roiling surface, and the rain whipped against his skin like tiny needles battering against his face and hands.

One particularly strong gust had ripped his feet clear off the surface of the water, like he hadn't been using chakra at all, and hurled him headlong into the water. He thought he'd drown, terror and fury that _the fucking ocean_ was doing to be his death as he thrashed for the surface, clawing through the currents that dragged him deeper into its depths.

Fuyudori held all of that desperation and rage, the untamed savagery of the ocean itself guided by the elegance Haku had so loved. It swallowed the attacking shinobi whole and dashed them into the unforgiving waves as the wind howled, and Zabuza watched with a dark satisfaction as the teams toppled or fled one after another in the face of his jutsu.

With one last swoop, Fuyudori dissipated in a shower of droplets, leaving in its wake a fine mist and scores of bodies littering the waves. The ocean was empty in its wake.

The battle was over. Whatever loyalist shinobi who were still alive had fled.

Zabuza looked up and recognized one of the figures now pouring down over the side of the cliff on which the lighthouse still stood - the captain of the Medical Unit herself, silhouetted against the bluff with a relatively fresh crop of medical teams at her back and the remnants of Unit 17.

Seeing her reminded Zabuza of the faint trails of fire burning along his torso, where his guard had let a hit slip past, or when he took a hit to land a greater one. He appeared to be leaking blood at a decent rate, but it probably wasn't fatal.

A thump on the deck behind him heralded the arrival of Yanagi the younger. "They've retreated," she reported. "The other two ships at the harbor mouth have turned back."

Zabuza turned. "Good," he said distantly, forcing himself to take one step towards the mizzenmast, then another. One more step towards Haku. He had his unit to check in with, the assault at the southern dam, the loud fucking brats at the Hoteimaru, but for just one moment, Zabuza stood two meters away from his apprentice and ignored it all.

His wounds throbbed, moreso now that his chakra was so spent, and Kubikiribocho rested heavily in its holster. Haku's face had frosted over, his lips a soft blue and the angles of his face even softer than they had been in life under the moonlight. He had been barely twelve.

Hana-ha teams gathered on the half-sunken Bishamonmaru's deck as the medical unit teams moved to assist, and Tsukimi withdrew to coordinate recovery efforts, but the top deck of the Daikokumaru remained eerily clear - empty, save him and Haku.

"They don't want to bother him," said Shizune, looking more alien than before in her mask as she slipped up behind him.

Zabuza closed the distance towards his apprentice with careful strides, one step at a time. What would Haku care if he were bothered? He was dead.

Shizune ducked past him briskly, her hand already lit with iryou chakra, and reached brusquely towards Haku's neck.

An irrational anger surged in Zabuza's chest. "He's dead," Zabuza said harshly. "Go fix someone who can be fixed."

"No," Shizune snapped absently, her eyebrows drawn together in a fierce scowl of concentration. "Quiet."

" _What,_ woman?" Zabuza demanded anyways.

"He's cold," said Shizune, ghosting feather-light fingers over Haku's chin. Her hands glowed a slightly brighter green, hesitating longer at the point where Haku's jaw met his neck.

Zabuza gritted his teeth. "He's dead. Of course he's cold."

Shizune wiped the frost off Haku's cheek, but even as she lifted her hand away, frost formed on the surface of his skin once more. Zabuza glared and tried really hard to clamp down on his killing intent.

"I don't - " She hesitated, her frown deepening as she touched Haku's face once again. "He's not dead," Shizune realized slowly. "He's frozen."

Frozen? _Frozen._

Son of a bitch.

"He's not dead?" Zabuza demanded, leaning over her shoulder urgently. A flicker of hope fluttered in his chest despite his best attempts to quash it, because if Shizune was wrong, Zabuza would be hard-pressed not to kill her on the spot.

"Not yet," Shizune muttered, and the chakra in her hand turned acidic for a split second as she neatly severed the stake from the mast, catching Haku's body as it slumped and lowering him carefully to the ground. "His blood is literally frozen, but it's like his arteries and capillaries flexed to accommodate the additional volume so there's no mass hemorrhage like you might expect, or even edema. His cells are in stasis - no pyroptosis or apoptosis or anything. Just - frozen, and - "

"So he's alive?" interrupted Zabuza, straining all his senses towards the very corpse-like Haku lying flat on the deck as Shizune ran questing hands around the rest of the wood still embedded in his abdomen.

Shizune huffed a breath. "He's not breathing but his heart is beating - extremely slowly - and if the temperature of his brain dropped quickly enough there might not even be damage - "

Zabuza didn't care about all that crap. _"Is he alive?"_

Shizune grimaced. "Maybe not for long, but now? Yes. He's alive. I need to get him back to land." She let the chakra in her hands fade and hooked one arm beneath Haku's knees and the other under his neck.

Zabuza blew out a half-laugh. Thank fuck Haku was a fucking fighter. "I can take him," he said, and reached out automatically.

Shizune glared and pivoted, forcing him to stop short or risk running over her. "There's nothing you can do to help," she snapped. "Go do your job, _captain,_ and let me do mine."

Zabuza bared his still-bloody teeth at her but the yuki-onna had seen Zabuza when he was missing half his internal organs and was definitely not impressed. "Fine, _captain,"_ he growled, and stepped back to let her pass.

"Momochi," she said, her voice softening minutely, and met his eyes gravely. "I'll take care of him." And then she and Haku were gone.

The Bishamaru was to be salvaged and recommissioned. So was the Daikokumaru.

"No," growled Zabuza, taking a menacing step forwards. "I don't care about the other ships, but this one goes down."

Yanagi the younger considered him neutrally, unintimidated by the way he towered over her and said, "Why this one? Because your apprentice died on it?"

Haku wasn't dead - not yet - but correcting her would take more effort than he cared to expend. "The Daikokumaru is a symbol," Zabuza said, trying to pare everything it represented down in a way an outsider could understand. They might technically both be captains, but it was Tsukimi's unit here, so Tsukimi had to be convinced first or jack shit would happen. "This is the fucking ship the Mizukage uses to remind the lower castes who holds power, because it's the ship the old clans used to conquer the rest of Mizu no Kuni."

"All right," Yanagi the younger said after a pause. "I'll have a team bust all the seals. We can blow it up in the harbor. You want to oversee?" she offered magnanimously.

Tempting. The warships were all high on his personal shitlist, but he hated the Daikokumaru with particular fervor. More now, after Haku. "Nah, I got something to do," Zabuza deflected. "Just make sure they see that fireball from the mountain passes."

"Sure thing," Tsukimi said agreeably. "Nothing like a great explosion to boost morale."

Zabuza went to check on the loud hellion children.

The loud hellion children were fine.

"We totally kicked their asses!" shrieked the blond demon child at unholy decibels. "They tried to kill us and we went ha! And ha! Haaaaah!" He punctuated this with a series of punches and kicks at the air, which Zabuza watched blankly. The brat was wearing bandages over his mouth and nose; how was he still so damned loud?

"That's nice," he said without bothering to pretend at sincerity. "What's your status?" This he directed at the girl, because she was more likely to give him a reasonable answer.

She jumped a little, but she had just been caught in an ambush so he gave her a pass. "We're good, sensei," she reassured. "We got a little banged up - Sasuke-kun got his arm slashed open and I bruised a couple ribs, but the medic-nin patched us up. We didn't let the ship get taken. And some of the enemy crews turned?"

Not surprising. Low caste crew grunts were always hungry for a good mutiny, even if they rarely succeeded. Zabuza grunted and eyed the smallest Uchiha critically. "Next time, don't get hit," he advised, to which the boy scowled thunderously. "Get your things. I'm moving you brats up to the lighthouse, I don't care what the lava-harpy thinks."

"He cares about us!" the blond brat gasped. The other boy elbowed him hard and the girl hissed, "Shhhh!"

Zabuza elected to ignore it all. His chakra was dangerously low, his head spun from the blood loss, and some things were too ridiculous to refute.

He found a member of the communications crew and sent him off to get a report from the southern dam. Though the sun had well and truly set, the rumbles of distant explosion signalled that the other battles were still going strong. Four warships would have been a dangerous trap, had they succeeded. Fortunately, upper caste shinobi were always overestimating how far fear went to buying loyalty.

Members of Shizune's unit had set up shop in the lowest level of the lighthouse, which was technically trespassing on what Mei had claimed, but Zabuza had learned that medic-nin tended to do as they pleased. The pallets of the wounded lined the bluff up to the lighthouse itself, and Zabuza picked his way along carefully because Shizune'd probably kick him out if he stepped on one of her victims. The captain herself had green chakra lit up to her elbows and a pair of assistants hovering at her side as she held her hands over Haku's abdomen.

"Is -is that Ichi?" pink-hair asked in a hushed voice from behind him.

"Sit down, shut up, and stay put," Zabuza said in response, and gently shouldered his way closer.

A sudden commotion on the other side broke out. A patient thrashed on the mat, a tortured howl ripping from his throat. Zabuza saw a spray of dark red, and a medic-nin cried out, "Shizune-sensei!"

Shizune's head jerked up and instantly, she darted around the table Haku was resting on.

"Hey," Zabuza snapped, startled, "What about - "

"He's stable, get out of my way!" Shizune shot back, rushing past him.

"What happened to him?" the blond brat piped up from right on Zabuza's heels, and Zabuza should have remembered that this group of hellions in particular had a thing for blatantly disobeying orders.

"He wasn't fast enough," Zabuza grunted, and went back to his primary method of dealing with Team Byakko: ignoring them.

The two assistant medic-nin leaning over Haku didn't look up when he loomed over them, except for the younger one to bite out, "For gods' sake, give us some room to breathe."

Zabuza scowled and took a pointed step backwards.

Haku looked the same. A fine layer of frost still dusted his face and hair, and the trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth sparkled with ice crystals. The stake of wood was now on the table next to him, darker where it was stained with his blood. As he watched, one of the iryo-nin withdrew a long splinter from Haku's side with a pair of tweezers and dropped it in a metal bowl.

"Why's he still frozen?" Zabuza demanded.

"No idea. But it's keeping him from bleeding out while we repair the damage," the medic-nin said shortly. "If you're going to stand there, be quiet so we can concentrate."

Given that she had a hand in Haku's guts, Zabuza figured he could. The brats huddled at his back watched silently as piece by piece, the medics patched his apprentice back together.

"Girl, brat, go back outside," he ordered, and when the jinchuuriki opened his mouth to protest, growled, " _Now._ I need you to wait for any messages that come for me and run them to me." No way in hell would Shizune let any messenger birds or shinobi into her space without grievous injury, and Zabuza did, unfortunately, still have responsibilities. Which he would get back to. Very soon. Once his chakra recovered a bit.

"Hai," said the girl, and dragged the blond out with her to his complaints of, "But, Go-go-chan - !"

Shizune shouldered her way past him once again and otherwise ignored him and the mini-Uchiha hovering by the wall, her smock a bit more bloodied than when she'd left. "Status?" she murmured as she took her place at the table.

"Just waiting for final checks before we close him up," said the younger.

Shizune nodded absently, green chakra flooding her hands as she reached for the open wound. "It's good," she said after a minute of scrutiny. "No stitches for this one, just chakra."

The older one looked up sharply. "No stitches - hai," he said when Shizune met her eyes grimly.

"Let me know when you're ready," said Shizune, and darted off seconds before the next cry of, "Shizune-sensei!"

A tiny shuffle at his side reminded him that there was still one member of the loud hellion team with him - fortunately, the least loud. But there was the usual Uchiha brooding quiet, which Zabuza was intimately familiar with, and there was the ninja bratling hiding something quiet. This was definitely the latter. He had something he didn't want Zabuza knowing about, or not even that metal respirator of his would keep him silent. "What's with you?" Zabuza grunted.

The tiny Uchiha glanced up, surprised, and checked over his shoulder to see if there was another small child that Zabuza was nominally responsible for that he might be talking to. There was not. Zabuza waited. Sasuke visibly struggled for an answer before settling on a shrug.

Zabuza sighed impatiently, keeping one eye on the two medic-nin working on Haku. "You injured?" he prodded.

"No," Sasuke said defensively. Zabuza could see the bandage wrapped around his arm, but it was relatively small and Sasuke made no attempt to hide it.

Zabuza stared. Sasuke glared back defiantly until Zabuza reached for him, then jerked backwards. He wasn't fast enough - Zabuza snagged the bottom of his shirt and bared a second, much larger bandage plastered over the neat line of stitches curving up from his hip to just under his ribs. "Fucking shit, boy, can't you keep your skin in one piece?" Zabuza snarled.

Sasuke snatched his shirt back and scuttled backwards until he hit the wall, the tips of his ears flaming red. "S'not a big deal," he muttered. "Shinobi with a sword. Chuunin, maybe. And _you're -"_

"Winter with the wolves. The first drill with the wolf-girl as the client," Zabuza snapped. "What did I tell you?"

The boy sulked. "Pick your battles," he recited dutifully.

Zabuza crossed his arms over his chest. "Pick your godsdamned battles," he agreed. "And?"

The scowl increased in intensity. "Come out of them alive."

"Alive," Zabuza stressed. "So no more of this crap." He waved a hand to indicate all of whatever Sasuke did to himself. "You're supposed to be the best shinobi on your team. The fuck kinda example are you setting for the other two?"

The boy stared at him with something that looked like incredulity but had nothing to say to that, so they lapsed into silence.

The next time Shizune came back, she spent less than a minute inspecting the other twos' work before nodding her approval. "Momochi," she said, slinging a satchel over her shoulder as the other two melted back into the bustle of the makeshift hospital. "I need a tub. Or a large fish tank."

Zabuza squinted at her. "A tub," he repeated slowly. "Sure."

There was a massive clawfoot in the bathroom of the master quarters, just under the command room where Mei held her briefings. Zabuza hefted Haku carefully and led Shizune and Sasuke up the three hundred and thirty steps to the top of the lighthouse. "Okay," he said, kicking open the door. He nodded towards the second door further in that led to the bathroom. "Bathtub."

"Set him down on the couch and come with me," Shizune directed, and moved towards the bathroom.

"Stay with him, boy," Zabuza ordered Sasuke, who wheezed a little in response and sank down on the floor in front of the couch. Probably should have left him downstairs so he didn't pop his stitches, but eh. He had it coming.

Shizune was examining the tub critically. "This is fine," she said, as if she had other options. "What we need to do is fill this with hot water and submerge him completely. If we don't thaw him quickly enough, his cells will die and he'll never wake up. Got it?"

"He'll what?" Zabuza demanded.

"Hot water," repeated Shizune patiently. "We need to get his temperature from sub-zero to homeostatic, fast. I don't know how much longer his genkai kekkei will keep him alive." She gestured at the tub. "His cells are fine when they're frozen, but anything between that and normal body temperature they'll start dying by the millions."

Well, fuck. Zabuza knew jack shit about reviving a frozen person but filled the tub with water anyways, since that was easy enough given his chakra nature. Heating it, on the other hand, burned rapidly through his still-recovering chakra. When steam billowed up from the surface, he reined his chakra back in and took a moment to blink the spots out of his vision.

Shizune had strapped a mask around Haku's face, enclosing his mouth and nose, and a rubber tube ran from the mask to what looked like a flexible waterskin in her hand. "This is a manual respirator. We're going to have to help him breathe with it while he's underwater," she explained. "Too much external pressure on his lungs might inhibit his breathing unless we give him a little extra push."

"Sure, fine, whatever," said Zabuza. She could tell him Haku needed a full body cast and three dozen injections to make the process go smoothly and he wouldn't know otherwise unless he caught deception in her body language. "Let's get this over with."

"Put him in," said Shizune. "And no matter what happens, keep him completely underwater. You too, Sasuke."

"Shi," the Uchiha brat corrected automatically, but hauled himself to his feet and trailed them to the bathroom.

"Okay," said Shizune, and nodded firmly at Zabuza. "Go."

Zabuza lowered Haku into the tub. For a moment, all was still except Shizune, squeezing the manual respirator, and the slow rise and fall of Haku's chest in time with her efforts.

From the end of the bathtub, where he was holding down Haku's feet to keep them from floating to the surface, Sasuke said, "Nothing's happening."

"It is," Shizune said tersely. "Momochi, keep the water warm."

Two minutes passed. Haku's skin warmed beneath Zabuza's hands, but he remained limp and insensate, his hair spooled about his pale shoulders like a cloud.

"He has a pulse," Shizune reported, snaking a hand down to Haku's throat. "A little slow, but almost within normal range."

As she spoke, Haku's eyes flew open, but his pupils were unfocused as his entire body spasmed. Zabuza snarled silently and caught Haku's hand and shoved him back into the water as his apprentice grabbed for the edge of the tub. Sasuke's respirator was knocked askew, and he lunged as he lost his grip on Haku's ankles and ended up halfway in the water. Tiny chunks of ice sparked into the air above the water and exploded, peppering the three standing over the tub.

"He's not warm enough," Shizune snapped, catching the neck of the respirator in her teeth and using her freed hand to hold Haku's head still. "Keep him under. Haku, if you can hear me, you're fine! You can breathe!"

Haku did not hear her or did not care. He battered the walls of the tub and wrenched his head from side to side until Zabuza captured both his wrists in one hand and forced them down, folding his arms over Haku's chest.

Haku's eyes focused and sharpened abruptly, locking onto Zabuza's face. His struggles slowed, and his mouth moved under the mask of the respirator.

"Yeah, kid," said Zabuza. "It's me. Lie still and trust me. That's an order."

The ice sparklers stopped. The feral panic faded from Haku's eyes as they drifted closed.

Shizune let out a quiet breath, steadying the respirator. "He's going to be fine," she said.

Haku slept through Zabuza fishing him out of the tub and draping his clothes back on him. He slept through the three hundred and thirty steps down to the ground floor, and stayed asleep when Zabuza laid him on an empty pallet.

Shizune sorted through a table of clean instruments, her air of frenetic energy never abating. The battle may have ended, but the medic-nin duties - and on top of that, her captain's duties - always remained.

"Hey," Zabuza said gruffly. "Thanks. For - " he jerked his head at Haku's bed.

"He used to be a hunter-nin," Shizune responded without meeting his eyes. "His kekkei-genkai makes him valuable to Hanabi-ha, especially in this campaign." She tucked a handful of surgical tools back into her smock pocket. Zabuza could read between the lines: strategy and politics had judged Haku important enough to save his life, despite how triage might have placed him, and at least one life had been traded for him to survive.

Zabuza didn't particularly care. There were thousands of Hana-ha grunts, and Zabuza had only one apprentice.

"I can't stick around," Zabuza said. "The boy'll keep an eye on him, but I need to get back to the battlefield at the southern dam." Gods knew Michishio had probably fucked it up to high heavens, left to his own devices.

Shizune nodded absently, giving him a glance on her way past, then paused. She took a closer look, eyeing him up and down and noticing maybe for the first time the bloody gouges in his armor, and said with some disbelief but mostly resignation, "You're bleeding."

Zabuza looked down. "Yeah," he said. "A bit, I guess."

The Uchiha brat muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, "Hypocrite."

"Take it off," Shizune ordered. "Armor, shirt. Off."

Zabuza gritted his teeth. "It's fine," he growled.

"Off," Shizune enunciated.

Zabuza wasn't exactly self-conscious but his dissection scars courtesy of that fucking snake bastard were hard to miss - and showing weakness in front of a room with mostly subordinates? Not happening. He scowled at Shizune.

Shizune, as the one who had been primarily in charge of his treatment two years ago, picked up on his reticence. She pursed her lips, her eyes dipping to his chest and then back up. "Follow me," she relented, and turned on her heel.

Zabuza paused long enough to jab a finger at the Uchiha brat and order, "Stay with him. Nobody touches him except Shizune. Get me if something happens." Sasuke nodded, drifting closer to Haku's bed. Zabuza unslung Kubikiribocho from his back, leaned it against the wall, and stalked after Shizune.

Shizune shot him a half-annoyed, half-harried glance over her shoulder. "I don't appreciate you complicating things for my medics," she warned. "They're all trained to help."

"Yeah, could any of them have defrosted Haku without killing him?" Zabuza shot back.

Shizune opened the door to the men's restroom abruptly, without knocking, in lieu of answering. Fortunately for anyone who might have been traumatized, and unfortunately for Zabuza, who took great delight in witnessing trauma, it was empty. She knocked open each stall door brusquely while Zabuza locked the door behind him. "Clear," she said, and turned expectantly.

Zabuza leaned against a sink and shrugged off the remnants of his armor and his shirt. The movement pulled at his injuries, and he could feel one of the burgeoning scabs crack.

Shizune eyed him critically. "Not life threatening," she surmised. "But you said you were going back into battle?"

"Yeah," Zabuza grunted. "If there's still a battle to go back to."

Shizune scowled, but she was probably used to her patients bleeding all over, getting patched up, and running right back into battle. "Don't move," she said, and stepped closer to press a green-lit hand to the deepest of his injuries. "Your scars have faded," she noted.

Zabuza rolled his eyeballs downwards. Huh. They had. The thick, knotted scar tissue, once aggressively pale against his skin, had darkened to a shade closer to the rest of him, and the raised ridge had receded a little. "Great," he said, with probably less enthusiasm than he could have.

Shizune shot him an exasperated glance and said, "So, is your flexibility better? Can you move without restriction or discomfort?"

Zabuza valiantly - and in the interest of self-preservation - did not make the easy suggestion of _you wanna help me find out?_ "S'fine," he said. "Doesn't really pull anymore."

"Good," said Shizune absently, her attention already diverted to the slash just under his ribcage. "If that changes, let me know and we'll schedule some follow-up treatments for scar tissue removal - " She cut herself off abruptly and, with an edge of annoyance, corrected, "We'll see if we can do something about it later."

Medic-nin were super anal about treatment regimens. The war, with its constant stream of half-healed and re-injured patients, must be driving them nuts. If they were anyone but medic-nin, Zabuza would probably just laugh at them, but medics could get pretty fucking testy, and he had a healthy wariness of anyone authorized to be around him when he was injured.

"Done," said Shizune, stepping back to give her handiwork one last scrutiny. "There were trace amounts of poison in the wounds, enough to be lethal, but it doesn't seem to be affecting you other than raising your temperature a little, so I didn't bother removing it."

"Probably jellyfish venom. Old man Funkazan liked to dip his sword in it," Zabuza said offhandedly, shrugging his battered shirt and armor back on. "I've got a tolerance. Basically immune."

Shizune propped her hands on her hips. "That couldn't have been fun."

Zabuza grimaced. "Wasn't. Can't complain, though."

Shizune unlocked the door and stepped out, only to duck out of the way as Naruto flung himself at the opening. "Sensei, there's a message for you!" he shrilled.

Zabuza plucked him out of the air by the collar and shook him roughly. "The hell do you think you're doing?" he snarled. He dropped the blond, who landed on his feet, unbothered.

"You gotta message!" Naruto repeated, and thrust a roll of paper at him.

Shizune rolled her eyes. "Excuse me," she said, and brushed past the two of them to the next row of patients. "Momochi, eat a couple of ration bars and maybe a chakra pill if you need it before you go, and don't undo all my hard work."

Zabuza skimmed the message as he made his way back to Haku's bed. Battles going fine, battles going less fine, troops redirected to the less-fine battles, and oh, one specifically for him asking where the fuck he was and why. Zabuza scribbled a quick reply: en route to battle at southern dam from lighthouse base hospital. Reason: fucked up a couple of attacking warships, saved the asses of everyone on the rearguard.

On cue, the ground rumbled as a massive shockwave ripped through the air. Zabuza glanced out of the nearest window automatically in time to see a huge fireball billow out on the harbor, lighting up the night, and couldn't quite suppress the satisfied smirk curling the corner of his mouth.

So long, Daikokumaru. It was _fun,_ but fuck you.

"Did you see that?" the blond brat breathed. "Oh man, they totally blew that thing up!"

"Yep," said Zabuza, and handed him the note. "Give that back to the messenger. And bring the girl back here afterwards."

Naruto paused, shooting an unsubtle glance at Haku. "Is Ichi okay?" he asked in a voice too loud for even a civilian to consider a whisper.

Zabuza rolled his eyes. "He's fine. Look, brat, give the message to the messenger," he said slowly, so Naruto's itty little brain could keep up. "Bring the girl - your teammate - back here. Got it?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah," said the jinchuuriki. "Be right back!"

Thank the gods.

Zabuza stalked back over to Haku's bed. Sasuke watched his approach warily, but when Zabuza didn't speak, turned his attention back to scanning the rest of the room with darting glances. Zabuza eyed him judgmentally because that was probably some sort of trauma, but he'd already given this kid one intervention that day. He retrieved Kubikiribocho and strapped it back into place.

"Sensei, we're here!" shouted the blond brat. Zabuza closed his eyes briefly and resisted the urge to punt him through the window and into the ocean.

"Shut up, idiot," Sasuke grumbled.

"This is a medical ward!" the pink-haired girl hissed, appalled. "Keep it down!"

"Oops," said Naruto, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. At a marginally quieter volume, he added, "So what's up, Sensei? We gotta mission or somethin'?"

"What?" said Zabuza blankly. "...yeah, sure, you have a mission." He jerked his chin at Haku. "This idiot got himself impaled."

"Don't call him an idiot!" Naruto shrilled. Zabuza cuffed him upside the head for being loud again. Gently. Because Shizune would have his head if he broke the brat's neck in her own field hospital.

"This _fool,"_ Zabuza stressed instead, glaring at the blond brat, "got himself impaled. Your mission is to guard him until he wakes his dumbass up. No one touches him except Shizune. Stick together, but one of you stays with him at all times. Got it?"

Sakura nodded seriously.

"What happens when he wakes up?" Naruto piped up, because he didn't really learn, did he?

"Then he's in charge and you do what he says," Zabuza growled. "I have a date to fuck someone up, so any more stupid questions?" The trap was set for Naruto. Sasuke definitely knew what he was doing, but he was also too proud not to fall for it, and Sakura wouldn't confront him anyways. It worked; all three frowned at him silently. "Great," said Zabuza. "Don't do anything dumb."

Zabuza went to go find someone to fuck up. And do his captain things.

The air outside trembled. The base of the mountains north of him were shrouded in a faintly green mist that seemed to glow in the moonlight when he made his way out of the hospital, and the ground rumbled with distant explosions. He jogged through the streets back towards the southern dam, stuffing half a ration bar into his mouth at a time and choking them down as quickly as he could.

The reservoir was eerily quiet. There was no trace of either army on the banks or the surface of the water, and from the far edge of the reservoir the guard towers looked similarly abandoned. A second glance revealed the deitries of battle - waterlogged corpses bobbing along with the tide, furrows and gouges in the banks and walls of the reservoir, scattered kunai and discarded katanas red with drying blood. Water still spilled uninterrupted over the lip of the dam, its roar drowning out anything else he might have heard.

Zabuza bundled his chakra beneath his skin, took two steps out onto the surface of the water, and his foot bumped against something squishy. He glanced down absently and stopped short.

It was Massao, half of his face horrifically burned, his lungs and stomach bloated with water as the lower half of his body bobbed with the receding tide. His eyes were open, his mouth locked in a grimace, and even in death he clutched the hilt of his tanto. His hair was dark with water and his skin was waxy and white, the blood in his body already leeched out of the innocuously small wound in his side.

A familiar bitterness swelled in Zabuza, the kind that smouldered and stirred his chakra and made his hand twitch for Kubikiribocho. There would be no miracle recovery for Massao, genkai kekkei-less and left behind.

Zabuza reached down and dragged Massao fully out of the water and onto the gravel. Then he just stood there for a moment, studying the disfigured face. "You're a fucking loser, you know that?" he bit out. "Make it this far only to get taken down by one of Soseku's sorry bastards?"

Massao did not answer. Massao was dead.

He'd have gotten a kick out of Zabuza ripping out Funkazan-taichou's throat though. They didn't talk about it out loud, ever, since that was as good as asking for a beating, but he and Zabuza had traded many glances laden with rage and hatred and promises after a long or particularly punishing day. Suffering and promises of murder: nothing did more for low caste crew grunts' bonding.

"I got that old fucker," Zabuza said aloud, in case Massao hadn't been paying attention to that. "Him and the Daikokumaru both're at the bottom of the bay now, so rest easy."

He couldn't think of anything else to say. Massao was beyond the meaningless struggles of mortal men; what could Zabuza say that meant shit now? Zabuza had seen many comrades fall, but of those he would consider friend, he had precious few. The number had just dropped once again. He gave himself the luxury of one minute, then two, standing on the shore next to where Massao lay. "Wind in your sails, old friend," Zabuza said at last, then turned back towards the dam with finality.

No one challenged him as he took the most direct route, straight across the surface of the reservoir and up the waterfall. He didn't stop for any of the submerged bodies, either - he didn't have time to see whether he recognized the faces, and frankly, right now, he didn't want to know. He landed lightly on the battlements in a crouch, Kubikiribocho in one hand, but again, no one greeted him but corpses.

There was a seal to keep the guard tower strong, to reinforce the dam and keep it intact, and another that had been slashed through messily with chakra and a blade - probably a trap or alarm seal. Zabuza brushed past them and ducked into the interior of the tower.

Here, if he strained his hearing, he could hear what sounded like the clash of metal on metal, echoing distantly from the mazelike tunnels - or what could just be the drip of water from ancient pipes. Kubikiribocho was too large to swing effectively down here, so he slung it over his back, divested a nearby fallen shinobi of their tanto, and stalked down the stairs.

Likely the easiest way for Zabuza to find someone - anyone - would be to head straight for the wide-open space where the turbines were housed, but that could be a quick way to accidentally maroon himself behind enemy lines. He settled for moving through the guard towers and hallways against the face of the dam instead.

It was quiet. He shifted his grip on the borrowed tanto as he padded along the cement floors. Droplets of water trickled from the naked pipes running just under the ceiling. He passed splotches of blood, shuriken embedded in the wall, stepped over a couple of unfortunate bastards, and when he opened the door to the third guard tower, encountered his very first live shinobi.

Two kunai flew straight at his face; he slammed the door shut, and it rattled at their impact. "Hana-An-031, captain, identify!" he barked.

A pause.

Zabuza tightened his grip on his tanto. "Hana-An-031, captain, Unit 15," he repeated loudly. "Identify!"

"Hana-An-023," came the muffled reply.

Zabuza waited. "Rank? Unit?" he demanded.

"Chuunin, Unit 9," came the prompt reply.

Zabuza nodded to himself. "I'm coming in," he growled. "Don't fucking attack me."

He adjusted the grip on the tanto again. Little pigsticker. The balance on the thing was all wrong, but maybe he'd be able to swap it out with someone inside.

He opened the door and stabbed the first man full in the chest. From there, it was total fucking glorious chaos.

Zabuza vaulted out of the way of a katana and substituted with a barstool that was promptly demolished by a suiton. He hopped onto the wall and used the added height to pounce on a kunoichi who swung at him grimly with a katana. He met her blade with his own, bearing down on her with his greater weight. A shinobi lunged at him from either side, one with ninja wire strung along a shuriken, the other with a pair of oversized kunai.

Zabuza yanked the kunoichi up, straight into the path of the shuriken, and dropped like a rock to get under kunai-shinobi, ripping his tanto up and under the man's chest with a spray of blood.

Fourteen shinobi in the room, now two dead. Zabuza hurled his tanto at a shinobi about to wrench open the door to the northern halls and nailed him in the shoulder, pinning him to the door. He ducked a kunoichi's katana and grabbed her by the wrist. He slammed her into the wall, wrenching her sword around to stab her in the chest with her own sword.

And hey, the katana wasn't too bad, so he took it, yanking it back out and letting her collapse to the ground with a gurgle. Mm, yes, it felt weird, but there wasn't a single weapon Zabuza couldn't wield. Zabuza turned purposefully.

Metal flashed, blood sprayed, and Zabuza carved his merry way through the rest of the shinobi. He ended at the shinobi he'd pinned to the door, who had since pulled the blade out of his shoulder and positioned himself in a ready crouch as Zabuza advanced.

Zabuza, liberally splattered in the blood of the rest of the man's squad, rolled his eyes. "Idiot," he muttered, and didn't say, _Unit 9 is on the opposite side of the island slogging through the sewers,_ or _Unit 9 isn't even a Hana-ha Unit,_ or _a chuunin would have identified themselves as either Guntai or Shirei-bu,_ even though he really wanted to gloat. "Make this easy on yourself," he said gruffly. "Do you really think you can kill me?" He gestured to the rest of the room, the floor of which was liberally covered in puddles of blood, and the corpses draped awkwardly over the roughly built furniture. He didn't feel very bad about it. These teams had signed up to be the suicide squad, anyways. They just hadn't taken out as many shinobi as they'd hoped: a grand total of zero.

"Shut up," snarled the other shinobi, crouching lower. His left arm dangled, the sleeve stained from the blood trickling down from where Zabuza'd stabbed him.

Zabuza shrugged, twirling his borrowed katana around languidly. "Fine. Better for me if you did the talking anyways," he drawled. "What's the situation here? Seems kind of dumb to have one little pocket of shinobi hanging out in this tower."

The other shinobi didn't respond, inching back towards the door Zabuza had come out of.

"Fine," Zabuza grumbled, rolling his eyes. "I can cut you up a bit if it'll make you feel better about spilling. The shinobi's eyes widened as Zabuza strode forward, batting aside his feeble attempt to block with the tanto.

The other shinobi ducked to the side, but Zabuza caught him by the scruff like he was one of the kids and tossed him to the floor. "Now," said Zabuza, dropping the katana and drawing a kunai. "Ow, shit," he muttered, as the shinobi swiped at him with the tanto. He caught the man's wrist and bent it backwards until he dropped the tanto with a muffled squeak.

"Now," Zabuza said again, straddling the man and pinning the man's arms with his knees. "Again. Actually, how about your name and rank? That much's protocol."

The man eyed him suspiciously. Zabuza rolled his eyes. "You really want to lose a hand over your fucking name?"

"Arinaga," the shinobi grated out. "Genin."

"Liar," said Zabuza, and reaching around for the man's hand.

"Chuunin!" Arinaga corrected, jerking away desperately. "I'm chuunin."

Zabuza paused to smile nastily at him. "Yeah, you are," he said cheerfully. "Which caste?" He twirled the kunai in his hand threateningly.

The adam's apple bobbed in Arinaga's throat. "M-middle," he answered.

"Hm," said Zabuza. "That's disappointing. All right. How dead is Fuhen? Soseku Fuhen, the captain."

Arinaga hesitated. "Not?"

Life was full of disappointments. Zabuza would have loved to stay and chat; unfortunately, one missing hand and a shattered kneecap revealed that Arinaga knew only that his squad had slipped around behind the Hanran as the main loyalist forces retreated. The good news: Zabuza would probably find the rest of the unit pretty soon. He cut Arinaga's throat, told him, "Thanks," and stepped over the scattered bodies to the far end of the tower.

The next set of hallways rang with the faint clang of metal, and the walls trembled threateningly. Bursts of chakra set the air around him vibrating. Zabuza picked up his pace, following the source down two wallways and a set of stairs into the antechamber for the turbine room.

"Sensei," greeted Neji, the tanto in his hand unsheathed.

"Hm," said Zabuza. "You see me coming? Where's the princess?"

"Here, Sensei," interjected Temari, taking a fast pivot around the corner. "Ni suggested we pull back to meet up with you." There was a thin slice along her shoulder, and dirt smeared her face, but she appeared otherwise intact.

Neji nodded once in agreement. "I thought it best to orient you to the battlefield."

He'd seen the mess in the guard tower, then. "All right," Zabuza grunted. "What's the situation?" he leaned to the side as an errant kunai flew past.

"Hanran forces have taken most of the northern half of the dam," reported Temari, "including the other half of the pincer trap you ran into. Most of the battle is in this big space." She gestured at the turbine room.

"Where is Ichi?" Neji asked, his head cocked ever so slightly. "I did not see him with you."

"He got stabbed," Zabuza grumbled. "Forget about him. This battle needs to wrap up." Temari and Neji exchanged a glance, but Zabuza didn't care to decipher it. He stalked closer to the main turbine room to get a better look at the battlefield.

On first glance, skirmishes ranged all over, with teams clashing one-on-one or two-on-one, pushing or falling back to create a very ragged front line. The housings for the turbines were cracked but more or less intact. The cement walkways, however, were pitted and scarred and slick with water. A team of four darted out from behind a turbine, half its members firing off a joint suiton as the rest beat a speedy retreat deeper into the building. A Hanran team, the leader waterlogged but energetic, vaulted after them, and the pair of kunoichi behind him followed suit more slowly.

Zabuza sighed. "The fuck is Michishio doing?" he grumbled under his breath. "Trying to lose more shinobi fighting guerilla style? Wait," he said abruptly. "Is he dead?"

"No," said Temari, giving him a strange glance.

Zabuza sighed again. Another disappointment. "Pity," he muttered. "Let's go find him. Point me at him, punk."

Zabuza found Michishio after only two ambushes and one close call for the remainder of Neji's hair. He muscled his way into the man's duel with a trio of chuunin and said, "Hey - " _dipshit,_ " - what - " _the fuck_ " - are you doing with this battle?"

Michishio bisected a chuunin at the waist, only for him to bleed only water when a Mizu bunshin took the attack. He grunted, eyeing Zabuza with intense irritation. "Capturing the dam. The thing you were supposed to help with."

"I cleared out half of a trap in the third tower," Zabuza informed him, beheading a clone with particular ferocity.

"I know," Michishio said in that irritatingly condescending voice of his. "Your little sensor told me."

Zabuza glowered at Neji but mostly at Michishio. "Yeah? You know you can't afford to whittle down their forces like they can ours."

"We're making significant gains and have eliminated many of their shinobi," Michishio snapped back. "There's no other way to capture the dam intact."

"Look," said Zabuza impatiently, deflecting a barrage of shuriken one by one with his kunai. "Pull your men back, throw up a nice mist, and let the loyalists choose if they want to die like fish in a barrel or pull back without taking massive losses.

"How exactly do you expect me to pull my shinobi back without alerting the other side?" Michishio demanded scathingly, and darted forward with a burst of chakra to behead a loyalist shinobi before the other could finish a suiton. "Execute a silent killing now, and most of my unit will go down too."

Zabuza snarled and took the opportunity to pounce on a team that thought they were hiding in an adjoining hallway.

"If their side puts up a Kirigakure first, you can go in," Michishio offered grudgingly when Zabuza returned.

"Fuck you, I'll do what I want," said Zabuza on principle, tossing his professionalism to the gutter where it belonged. "Do you have any kind of plan here or what?"

"Yagura doesn't care if we take the dam," Michishio pointed out. "He's trying to wear down our forces before the siege."

"You, me, your top ten jounin, shock attack. All out," Zabuza suggested impatiently, eyeing the erratic front lines. "Start from the left and cut across. Everyone else falls back to the antechamber once we get to 'em. Let's get this over with."

Michishio squinted at the far end of the turbine room. He had been fighting nonstop for several hours, but Zabuza wouldn't have been able to tell from the man's iron composure. "Deal," he said at last.

Zabuza grinned.

"Did he go down fighting?"

Zabuza, incredibly low on chakra, energy, and bullshit tolerance, squinted up at the sand princess in the flickering light of the torches mounted on the interior walls of the tower. "What?"

They were camped in the far south tower of the dam, in the fifth floor shared with two of Michishio's teams. Zabuza didn't really trust them, but habitable space was limited after they'd absolutely trashed most of the dam, so they made do.

Temari couldn't hide her exhaustion despite her best efforts. A thin slice on her temple had scabbed over, and she moved stiffly, favoring her left knee. "Haku," she clarified.

"Yeah," said Zabuza. Then, "No? He was still on his feet when he got impaled. It pinned him upright. He didn't fall."

She and Neji did that thing again with their eyes where they looked at each other, even though Neji's eyes were completely hidden. He looked like a dick, wearing sunglasses indoors, but to be fair he could pass for a blind shinobi with other augmented senses, which was pretty much the point. Temari took a breath and asked, "Was he in a lot of pain?"

She could be asleep right now. Zabuza had a shitton of administrative crap to shovel through, but instead of sleeping, Temari was asking him asinine questions about his apprentice. "Like fuck, probably," he agreed. "What's with you?"

"She would like to know how you are so callous at Haku's death," said Neji coldly. "As do I."

Wait. What?

Zabuza felt a migraine encroaching at the corner of his forehead.

"First of all," said Zabuza, "Haku's a shinobi, and shinobi are weapons. They're tools. Do you think I'd cry if I broke Kubikiribocho?" Kubikiribocho would regenerate, but that was beside the point.

Temari's eyes narrowed furiously. Neji cocked his head and said, "Haku...is?"

"Second of all," Zabuza continued waspishly, glaring at the pair, "Haku's not dead. He's fine. Probably unconscious."

"He's not dead," Temari repeated slowly, the tension in her body slowly dissipating. Abruptly her glare returned, and she snapped, "What the hell, Sensei?"

"Hey!" Zabuza barked, glowering right back at her until her eyes flickered away. Yelling at him in public? Of all the kids, she should know better. Around the room, eyes drifted casually to their corner and away again when Zabuza snapped his head up to stare them down. "Watch it. It's your own damn fault for jumping to conclusions. Did you really think he was dead, all afternoon?"

"Yes," Neji said. "You told us he 'got stabbed' and to 'forget about him.'"

Fair.

"Well, he's fine," Zabuza growled. "Team Obnoxious is watching him til he gets his ass out of bed. They're fine too," he added cattily. "I'm sure they'll be glad you asked."

The two brats looked at each other again. "What about Genbu?" asked Temari.

"Do I look like a messenger to you?" Zabuza growled. "How should I know?" Zabuza belatedly realized that his chakra levels might have a negative correlation with his irritability. Tough. The kids would roll with it; they were good about that. "Hey," he said. "We're on standby, and gods know when we might have to move again. Get some sleep now or you'll get yourself killed during battle and embarrass me." He jerked his head towards the corner he had claimed by way of outranking everyone else in the room.

There was a table shoved up against the wall; its accompanying chairs were shattered in pieces on the floor. Temari filed over obediently, hopping up with a false ease that mostly hid aching muscles and stinging wounds. After a final chakra pulse, throwing out his sight a bit to make sure they were safe, Neji followed suit, lying down gingerly and bundling his kunai pouch under his head like a pointy makeshift pillow. Zabuza leaned against the table edge and got out his map.

Harbor: secure. Southern dam: secure.

A tiny figure pulsed a beat of chakra from the window. The heads of the team closest popped up, but Zabuza growled, "It's for me," and like gophers they ducked back down. The crow hopped through the window and fluttered its way over. Zabuza rescued an intact stool and perched on it, eyeing the two genin sleeping with their backs pressed against each other.

Sickening.

He held up his wrist for the crow to perch on. "What do you got?"

"Caw," answered the crow, and held out the scrap of rolled paper tied to its leg.

Zabuza eyed the bird as he untied the message. It was from Shisui. This crow wasn't Mirin, the flock leader and the only one Zabuza could identify by sight. "Shoyu?" he tried. "Dashi? Tamari?"

"Caw," said the crow.

Ah. Dashi.

Zabuza flapped the paper open with his free hand and forced his eyes to focus on the tiny script. As its temporary captain, Shisui had kept Zabuza's unit mostly intact. The four teams that had been redirected to the harbor had since returned to the battle at the narrow Usui-touge mountain pass, since that one was still ongoing.

 _No immediate assistance required,_ it concluded. _Request your return when available, no later than 0600 hours tomorrow unless otherwise notified._

0600 hours - factoring in travel and genin mobilization time, Zabuza had enough time for a good three hours of sleep. _Fuck yeah._

 _Acknowledged,_ Zabuza scribbled at the bottom of the paper. _Southern dam secure: confirmed. Allied losses within expected parameters; defer to Hanran-Shi-097 for more accurate estimate of numbers._ He rolled the sheet tightly and offered it to Dashi, who stuck out his leg obligingly.

"Hey," Zabuza grunted as he fumbled his way through a knot one-handedly. "If he wants to send a response, tell 'im I need an update on Genbu."

"Caw," Dashi croaked, fixing one beady eye on Zabuza with annoyance.

"Yeah, cry me a river," Zabuza growled. "Go on, get out of here."

The bird flapped deliberately in Zabuza's face before launching itself at the window.

Zabuza watched it go sourly. The stupid things were why Zabuza believed the people who claimed that summons picked summoners of similar personalities.

Temari had turned thirteen last month, becoming the first of the shinobi children to make it to her teenage years. Zabuza had congratulated her by bringing her with him to an outpost and letting her plan the blitz, and also giving her a brace of kunai - proper Kiri-style kunai, not the wimpy kind the other villages used - that he found in the supply tent. If they had been in a Hidden Village, he'd have signed her up for the chuunin exams if he hadn't already done so, in preparation for pawning her off to lead her own team and washing his hands of her. As it was, he was stuck with her.

Fortunately, she was about as reliable as Haku, even if she didn't have the handy kekkei-genkai. Unfortunately, she was nowhere near as deferential and had a tendency towards emotionality that, while giving her an aggressive edge in combat, also included useless things like affection and cheerfulness.

Zabuza glared at her. By all accounts, a teenager who had fought all night and gotten maybe five hours of sleep should have been surly and nonverbal, like the Hyuuga punk. Temari, when faced with sleep deprivation, became absolutely manic. She beamed back at him, twirling a kunai in one hand as the other drummed against the table with unrestrained energy.

It was too much for Zabuza to handle, having woken up exactly seven minutes ago. "Get your shit together," he ordered, packing away Kubikiribocho. "I'm going to tell Michishio we're leaving or he'll bitch about it to Command."

"Hai," said Temari cheerfully. Neji just nodded once, shortly, which was much more of how Zabuza felt.

"Oh, and princess," he said over his shoulder, remembering a beleaguered Dashi's second nighttime visit. "Genbu. They're fine."

Temari lit up like the fucking sun. Zabuza got the hell out as Neji's scowl deepened - better he deal with her than Zabuza.

Neji...rankled. He was basically everything Zabuza hated wrapped up in a small, bratty genin package: from a noble clan, arrogant to the point of condescension, and fatalistic, bordering on self-pitying or defeatist. He played at subservience to Hinata, but Zabuza had seen him legitimately try to kill the girl within a week of meeting him. Zabuza was all for rising against the oppressively powerful, but the tiny Hyuuga girl? A particularly angry squirrel could take her down. Hell would freeze over before she tried to impose anything on Neji, and he was too dumb to realize it. He was better about it now than he'd been a year ago, but Zabuza would have to beat the rest out of him later.

After the war.

Zabuza reached the top floor of the tower that Michishio had commandeered for himself and knocked brusquely before opening the door.

"Etiquette dictates you wait for a response after knocking," Michishio snapped without looking up. He looked disappointingly normal, without a hint of fatigue in the lines of his face. The only sign he'd been in battle was a tear through his flak jacket at the shoulder and a spotted bandage around his forearm.

"We're in a war," pointed out Zabuza, who thought it was pretty damn polite of him to bother knocking at all. "Etiquette means jack right now."

Michishio gritted out, "What do you want?"

"I'm leaving," said Zabuza. "Taking my two with me. Don't count us in your personnel tally."

"Good riddance," Michishio muttered. "I'm taking half the unit to back up the Rakoshi Pass assault. You need to send a message, send it there."

"Whatever," said Zabuza. "Don't die before I get the chance to kill you, old man."

" _Old man,"_ Michishio hissed under his breath. Zabuza smirked as he breezed out. Too easy.

The Lower City had begun to stir. After half a week, the shinobi battle had not touched the civilians; as dawn brought sunlight spilling over the mountains, some of the bolder townspeople began venturing outdoors, or unlocking shop doors even if they did not set up wares outside.

Temari watched them warily as they passed, a hand hovering just over her kunai holster. Her chakra roiled uneasily, replenished by sleep and ration bars.

"Pick up the pace," Zabuza ordered gruffly. He had no desire to linger.

Neji's eyes were admittedly useful, which Zabuza recognized once again as they moved through the streets. They didn't need to inch along the streets cautiously in case a squad got behind them or lay in wait because short a good seal, nothing could hide from those eyes. So yeah, okay, maybe the punk's arrogance wasn't entirely unfounded.

Usui-touge was not a route of great significance at any time except wartime. It was a meandering trail through the mountains that would have been scenic if there was anything to be seen; as there was not, it was just a rocky and overly convoluted path from which sensei sometimes took their teams or apprentices out on to train or practice survival in the wilderness. Travellers, suppliers, and pretty much any other traffic to the inner village took the broader, more direct Karikachi-touge.

But where the Karikachi had a major chokehold which had been very effectively trapped and blockaded, the loyalists could not do the same for the Usui-touge, though defensive traps did scatter the slopes. Hence, Shisui had taken Zabuza's unit to slog along the Usui-touge in hopes of cutting around through the mountains behind the blockage and opening the Karikachi for Hana-ha and Hanran troops to march straight down to the Village.

Command didn't have high hopes, so they had lots of contingencies.

Zabuza - or more accurately, Neji - found Shisui standing at the crest of a ridge overlooking a shallow valley. Before him, teams of shinobi curled or sprawled on the ground, using equipment packs or extra jackets as blankets or pillows. Other groups sat oiling weapons or gnawing ration bars tersely, and at the edges of the group, teams stood guard with blades close at hand.

"Z," Shisui acknowledged absently, his mask angled towards the distant ridge on the far side of the valley. "Hey, Rei. Hey, Ni. Hope Ichi's feeling better."

Neji nodded; Temari said, "Hi, Sensei."

Zabuza eyed him up and down. There was a strained set in the way he held himself, simultaneously taut as a hunting cat about to lunge and slightly stiff, as if he were the one being hunted. "You haven't slept," he noticed.

"Nope," agreed Shisui glumly. "Every time we stop to rest, and half the time we're marching, their forces attack us with fast mobile teams and retreat before we can counterattack."

The irony. The tables had turned.

"They're wearing you down," Zabuza surmised. "Another day of this and your teams will go down like paper ships."

"They're actually your teams," Shisui pointed out very dryly. "It's your command now, since you're back."

"Yeah," agreed Zabuza. "It's my command. So get some fucking rest, Konoha, I swear to the gods if you go down from exhaustion in the middle of battle I'll laugh at your corpse and throw it off a cliff."

"Thanks," said Shisui. "Not much change from the last update, by the way. Tokubetsu jounin Saeko and Kenta are in charge of coordinating traps; they should just about have something figured out. They're at the south side right now. And remember to say hi to Genbu."

Team Genbu was at the very southmost end of the camp in a sandy hollow, avoided by the other teams because nobody liked getting the gritty little grains everywhere. The genin themselves were untouched by the sand.

"Captain," said Hinata, without turning. Good. Zabuza didn't have the energy to deal with her nerves today. The rest of her team greeted their arrival silently, which Zabuza appreciated. All three of them wore their Yorozoku masks - the only of the children to do so, besides Haku, who liked to switch between the Yorozoku mask and his old hunter-nin one.

"Get Rei and Ni caught up," Zabuza ordered. "I'll be back."

The second he turned, the sand jinchuuriki slunk over to his sister, who greeted him with a fond, "Hey, Shichi," and a hair ruffle.

The Hyuuga girl, who was marginally more playful in this persona, turned towards Neji, who warned icily but with some alarm, "Don't."

Tokujo Saeko was perched delicately on a large rock outcropping, one leg crossed over the other. Her partner, Kenta, was muttering under his breath as he scratched out a diagram in the dirt. Saeko lifted her eyes and without any surprise greeted, "Taichou. Good to see you back."

Kenta squinted up at him. "Oh," he said vaguely. "Taichou."

Zabuza grunted a greeting. "Give me good news."

Kenta hesitated. Saeko said, "Juu-taichou asked us to come up with a way to deter these guerilla attacks. Kenta specializes in douton and traps; he thinks we have a workable plan if we can predict when the next strike will happen. Operative Kyuu has been very helpful in sensing approaching attackers, and Operative Hachi with aerial recon," she added. "The only other sensor-nin we have left in our platoon is Senior Genin Katsurou, but he's only half Inuzuka."

Inuzuka. Dog-nin. Good nose? Hana-ha squad and platoon leaders were notoriously territorial about their sensors; only reluctantly would any jounin or tokujo relinquish one, even in a temporary loan.

Zabuza brushed his stray thoughts aside. "What's the plan?"

"Well," said Kenta. "We would have to feign an opening, to lure a targeted attack, possibly when we start packing up the camp to move. Or we can have a flank appear unguarded when we keep marching. We think we'll involve only our shinobi in active roles, but let the other platoons know what will happen. And the other companies, of course."

Zabuza frowned. "You have a Guntai platoon in a Guntai company," he pointed out. "You sure just your shinobi can pull it off?"

"With all due respect," said Kenta in the kind of voice that said that the amount was _none,_ "our platoon - our entire company - has always fought well, no matter what orders were given. Our genin troops might not be leadership-oriented, and our chuunin team leaders might not have the flashiest jutsu, but - "

"That was a yes or no question," Zabuza snapped, "not an invitation to lecture."

"Yes, Taichou, we can handle it," Saeko said smoothly as Kenta snapped his jaw shut and glared murderously at the ground. "Forgive him. He's feeling defensive."

Ugh. _Feeling._ "Don't," Zabuza advised. The Shirei-bu company had under eighty members, but they all were considered exceptional in tactics and combat ability. The mixed Gun-Shi company was likewise eighty strong, and included chuunin and genin who were in the Command Corps or whose combat capabilities were considered above average. Comparatively, the Guntai company was generally given simpler maneuvers to execute and less opportunity for improvisation; Zabuza was damn well in the right to ask if the grunts could keep themselves together. "Get your trap ready, get Kyuu or Shichi, or whoever you need, and get me when you have an actual plan and not just a halfway decent idea."

"Hai," agreed Saeko, in unison with her partner.

Zabuza doubled back to pick up his dawdling children. "Princess, punk, on your feet," he said gruffly.

Neji turned immediately, but Temari stood with an almost imperceptible hesitation. Zabuza relented. "Ten more minutes," he said. "Then you get to learn how to play with others and the Silent Triad toddles over to help Saeko and Kenta with their traps."

"We have amazing teamwork," Temari objected, sinking back down between her brother and Hinata. Gaara blinked up at him once, silently, before returning his unnerving stare to his sister, eyes half lidded.

"With _others,"_ Zabuza stressed.

"How is Ichi?" asked Hinata. None of the baby infiltration team looked surprised about Haku. Shisui had probably for some reason decided it was relevant to the small children.

"Don't know," said Zabuza, because he couldn't exactly send a messenger to a bunch of excitable genin and Shizune would rend someone's head off their shoulders if Zabuza sent one to her about Haku. "Fine. Probably."

Hinata and Sai glanced at each other but, as was typical for them, did not press further. Gaara parroted under his breath, "Probably."

Zabuza didn't dignify that with a response. "Ten minutes," he said. "Let's go, small minions."

Kitajima had been a tokubetsu jounin when he left Konoha, and over the course of the war, picked up a second elemental affinity, a promotion, and a helluva lot of battlefield leadership experience. This, of course, Zabuza had learned from the report compiled by Shisui's unfortunate predecessor, which had included the basic histories of all eight of his Unit 15 jounin. Zabuza found him near the western edge of the camp, having just finished a discussion with his tokujo squad leaders. He straightened at their approach. "Captain."

"Kitajima," Zabuza acknowledged. "Status?"

"The company's ready to go, sir, I'm just updating the other units' positions," the other jounin said, and briefly glanced up at Temari and Neji behind Zabuza's shoulder before returning his attention to the map he was scribbling on.

Zabuza crossed his arms across his chest. "You got open spots in your teams for two genin? Shirei-bu, temporary."

Kitajima looked up again, a little longer this time. "Always," he said wryly. "Yes, sir, I can put them in with Tokujo Mineko, two of her squad are out on injury after the last skirmish."

"Great," said Zabuza. "Take them. Heads up, the Guntai company's First Platoon is drafting a plan to deal with the guerilla attacks."

"Oh," said Kitajima bleakly. "Hai."

Wonderful. Zabuza had one - maybe two - fewer problems.

Saeko picked her way across the camp, angling unerringly towards Zabuza, so he stopped and let her come to him. "You done?"

"Yes," said Saeko. She smiled.

Moving the entire 500-some strong unit at a light jog proved a ponderous undertaking, even though his soldiers were all shinobi. They could only travel along the path three to five abreast, and the road wound up and down the mountains languidly. Zabuza lurked in the center of herd like a tigerfish in a school of salmon.

It was completely, suspiciously uneventful. Zabuza picked up his pace let himself drift between the teams to Saeko's side. "Not a nibble," he noted gruffly.

Saeko tipped her head gracefully, but her eyes were pinched at the corner. "This is the longest the loyalists have gone without an attack," she said, and her gaze flickered over to the opposite side of the column, where her partner was wound up tight and trying hard not to show it.

Zabuza snapped his fingers. "Kyuu," he said, and Hinata slipped up to his side. "Where are they?"

"We've extended our collective range by sending Hachi's birds to the edge of mine," said Hinata. "The past two days, they remained just out of range until directly before an attack, but this time, it appears the loyalist teams have withdrawn entirely."

"We thought it might be a feint to lull us into a false sense of security, but even when my scouts ventured further out, they could not spot the enemy," added Sai. From the corner of his eye, Zabuza saw Saeko nod silent approval.

"Standby," Zabuza grunted. He sped up to where Shisui melded in with the teams at the front, nudging his way between the shifting walls of shinobi flak jackets. As he approached, so did a dark streak, swooping down over all their heads. It alighted on Shisui's wrist, a scrap of paper in its claws. It was a small messenger falcon, not one of Shisui's crows, its speckled plumage shades of coffee and cream, and it had clearly flown hard and fast from the droop of its wings.

Zabuza shoved the rest of the way forward as Shisui flipped the paper open. "Kyuu said the loyalist teams are missing," Zabuza growled.

"Yeah," said Shisui, handing him the message. The falcon took the opportunity to flutter up to Shisui's shoulder. "This is where they went."

 _Fuck._ "The Karikachi Pass."

"Units 11, 14, and 16 are there," Shisui agreed grimly, and tapped the paper. "Kiri played defense until they committed, then called back a bunch of squads, and with all the other battles, no one's in a good position to assist."

"Except us," Zabuza surmised.

"If you ignore the pace, the way this path curves on itself ten times in ten kilometers, and the fact that the slopes are trapped to hell and back, yeah," Shisui said grimly.

"Kiri's pulled its teams because by the time we get to the battle, it'll be over and we'd run straight into a slaughter." He paused, and Shisui gave him a deliberate look. "Konoha," Zabuza said with a very fake surprise. "That's cold of you." He raised his voice. "Unit 15, fifteen minute break. Hold your positions!" and the shinobi around them ground to a halt.

"It's not what you think," said Shisui in a low voice, drawing him aside.

"Oh, yeah?" said Zabuza, amused. "So your plan isn't to go straight over the mountains to the pass, traps be damned, with the Guntai genin as cannon fodder?"

"Yes," Shisui drew out slowly. "But I'm fast enough to pull them before any trap they trigger can kill them."

Zabuza stared. "You're not serious. You've lost your godsdamned mind."

"Incoming," Neji said from behind them helpfully. "Ichi and Team Byakko are inbound. I thought it prudent to inform you."

 _Fucking who now?_ Zabuza whirled on him, but Neji had already turned deliberately to make his way back to his temporary team.

"Huh," said Shisui.

Zabuza graciously waited until his apprentice had dropped the three brats out of the mirror and hopped down himself before demanding, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"My place is at your side, Zabuza-san," Haku replied serenely.

"Hi!" added the blond brat brightly.

Zabuza breathed deeply through his nose.

Shisui took mercy on his blood pressure and said, "Shi, Go, and Roku, go ahead and join the squad with Rei and Ni, hmm? Tell Tokujo Mineko I sent you. Stay with the medical crews and protect them, okay?"

Medical crews always stayed at the back of the battlefield, as far away from enemy fire as one could get while still actually being on the battlefield. The small Itachi-clone narrowed his eyes, because he smelled the rotting fish but wasn't about to call him out when Zabuza was clearly two seconds away from flattening him for letting Haku travel however fucking far it was from the lighthouse.

"Hai," agreed the pink-haired child sensibly, as her jinchuuriki teammate said, "Okay! Bye, Haa - Ichi!"

Zabuza rounded back on his apprentice, who looked entirely unrepentant. Shisui beat him to the punch, saying severely, "Haku-kun, from what I heard, you had major surgery less than a day ago - when you were, for most intents and purposes, dead."

Haku's eyes widened a little, but he said politely, "And I am much recovered now, thank you."

"Haku!" Zabuza snapped, and Haku turned to him. Heads turned casually or deliberately did not turn around them. Zabuza lowered his voice and hissed, "Go back to the hospital. You're worse than useless to me now."

Haku actually flinched at that, recoiling as if Zabuza had wound up and slugged him in the face. "You need me," he rallied.

"Yeah?" Zabuza demanded. "How d'you figure? I _need_ a dumbass genin who got himself killed against a warship captain?"

"Look, Haku," Shisui said. "We know you want to help. But most shinobi never walk away from an injury like that, let alone try to jump back in the fight less than twenty-four hours later. Give your body a chance to rest and recover."

"We don't have time for this shit," Zabuza growled impatiently. "Haku, go back to the lighthouse hospital. Konoha, Karikachi-touge. _We need a plan."_

"We have a plan," Shisui retorted. "Direct path to the battle. Sweeping teams trigger everything in our path, I pull out whoever sets one off before they get killed."

Zabuza snarled. "You're a fucking idiot, you know that?" Let the grunts die; if they weren't strong enough to survive, why bother staving off the inevitable? Konoha shinobi were the strangest creatures alive, and the fact that they still seemed to be alive was the strangest part of it all.

"Speed is the most important thing now," Shisui pointed out, "but so is making sure we still have a fighting force by the time we reach the Karikachi. I'm fresh enough for this."

Zabuza crossed his arms over his chest. "And when we get to the actual battle?" Shisui gave him a look. Zabuza snarled under his breath. "Fine," he snapped. "Kill yourself, see if I care."

"I won't," said Shisui, and then with a smirk in his voice and too quietly for anyone else to hear, "You will."

Zabuza should disembowel the fool on principle. Instead he turned abruptly on his heel and barked, "Unit 15 officers, sound off!"

"Shirei-bu Company, uh, present," called Nishigawa, the jounin-in-charge for the company.

"Gun-Shi Company present," rapped out jounin Kitajima.

"Guntai, First Platoon present." Saeko.

"Guntai Company Second Platoon present!"

"Guntai Company, Third Platoon present."

"Guntai Company, Fourth Platoon. Present."

"Guntai, Fifth Platoon, present."

"Guntai Company, Sixth Platoon, present!"

"Guntai Company, Seventh Platoon, present. All Guntai platoons present, taichou."

"Officers to me," Zabuza snapped. "There's a change of plans."

The rank and file were definitively not happy about the new plan for obvious reasons. The assorted jounin-in-charge and tokujo-in-charge of the companies and platoons were likewise displeased because they were Leaf and therefore soft.

"I will be extracting the scouts before they are caught in the traps but after they have been activated," Shisui snapped, again, urgency clipping his words.

"Respectfully, Taichou, you, ah, you probably won't be able to save them all," said Nishigawa.

"Or very many of them," added Kitajima. The doubter.

"The units at the Karikachi are Hana-ha," Zabuza pointed out gruffly. "They're going to lose men. We're going to lose men. This is not a discussion, this is a war. Do your jobs and Juu will do his."

One of the tokujo said, "Should he?" And her eyes stayed smooth and cold as glass even when most of the group turned disapproving looks in her. "I'm sure Juu-taichou would make a greater impact on the battle at Karikachi with his chakra preserved than depleted."

Zabuza had to admire the woman's nerve and ruthless pragmatism, which would be right at home in Kiri but was apparently frowned upon in Konoha.

"Worry about yourself, Tokujo," said Shisui. There was a thread of steel in his voice that warned against further argument, but he tipped his head ever so slightly at Zabuza.

Right. Zabuza's unit. Zabuza's command. Shisui was _being nice,_ trying not to muscle in. "Get your shinobi ready to march," he growled. "I gave you orders; follow them."

Shisui watched at Zabuza's side as the jounin and tokujo dispersed back to their platoons and companies. "This sucks," he said under his breath.

Zabuza snorted. "I'm sorry, did you think this was a tea ceremony?"

"That would suck too," muttered Shisui. He sighed and shifted, rolling his shoulders back.

Zabuza watched the shift of his muscles under his flack jacket. "You sure you wanna do this? You could just let them - " he waved a hand expensively, " - like Tokujo Yabuki said."

Shisui shot him a half exasperated look. "You're a cold-hearted bastard," he said without heat. "I got this."

The first wave of shinobi set out across the slopes at a decent run with a grim trepidation. It took two hundred meters for the first trap to go off - an explosive seal that blew rocks and shrubs sky high, and would have taken the unfortunate genin with it if not for Shisui. A blur, a burst of chakra, and Shisui deposited a dazed genin safely back with the second wave.

Zabuza, as long as no one asked him to say it aloud, would admit that it was pretty impressive; Shisui blazed in and out of the very front, and the genin grew bolder when they realized they that could step on exploding tag triggers and not die. He flashed to a kunoichi's side just as her foot touched the ground, sweeping her out of the blast radius and threw himself directly into another shunshin. Shisui moved like he knew where each trap would be before it was even set off.

Except, Shisui couldn't be everywhere, and even as the unit devoured the ground between themselves and the Karikachi, the cracks began to show: a shinobi scooped from a chasm that opened beneath him just a hairsbreadth before too late, the flak jacket on another singed, instead of a clean retrieval.

Two explosions rattled the ground simultaneously, then a third and fourth and fifth and sixth in quick succession. And that, even for Shisui, was too fast.

Zabuza gritted his teeth, but a familiar crackle made him freeze in his tracks even as his troops surged forward around him. Two bewildered and lightly charred genin stumbled out of the ice mirror that materialized next to him and were instantly lost in the press of shinobi. Zabuza snarled, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Juu-san cannot do this alone," Haku said fiercely, still - defiantly - in his ice mirror. "Zabuza-san, please. Let me do this."

Once he forced down the rage boiling in his stomach, and because he knew - fuck him to hell and back - that despite his speed, Shisui really couldn't save them all and especially not by himself and probably hated himself for that, Zabuza hissed, "You assist only when you are certain Konoha can't grab them all himself, and only if you are certain you yourself will not be injured. When we get to the battle, you stay the fuck away from it, do you understand me?"

"Hai," Haku agreed instantly. "Tha - "

"We'll deal with your disobedience later," Zabuza snapped. "Get."

"Hai," said Haku, and then he was gone.

But even between the two of them, they couldn't save everyone; Zabuza's unit left the scattered bodies mangled and scorched.

Hinata found his way to Zabuza's side to inform him, "Hachi's scouts report the battle at the Karikachi is ten kilometers away."

Zabuza grunted. "Halt," he barked, and gradually, the entire unit shuffled to a stop. "Ten minutes max, replenish your chakra. Officers, get ready to brief." He jerked his head at Hinata and shouldered his way to the front, where Shisui skidded to a stop and Haku all but tipped out of a mirror. "We're close," Zabuza told him without preamble.

"Ten kilometers," Hinata supplied.

"Just under a fifteen minute run." Shisui scrubbed a hand through his hair.

"Get me details on the battlefield," Zabuza ordered. "Numbers, positions, defenses, everything."

"Hai." Hinata darted back to her team.

"How do you want to play this?" Shisui asked. "You know. Generally."

Zabuza shrugged indolently. "Bit too hard for five hundred strong to launch a surprise attack."

Shisui grinned crookedly. "You're thinking head on. Hard and fast, everything we've got?"

"Think it's time you swatted the bees stinging your ass all the way through the mountains," drawled Zabuza.

Hinata brought Sai to make his report himself. Zabuza watched wolf-ravenous smirks spread on the faces of his shinobi. Shinobi were hunters, shinobi were killers, and the promise of battle set their feet skimming over the last kilometers with eager bloodlust.

At the ridge before the Karikachi, Zabuza turned to face the unit, swinging Kubikiribocho aloft, and bellowed, "Charge!"

Shisui blazed down the slope ahead of him shrouded in crackling white lightning; he didn't slow for the spikes shooting up at him from the barrier wall that rose in his path, crashing into them headlong and leaving them crumbled in his wake. Zabuza bared his teeth in a sharp grin, leaping high in the air to avoid the spikes and landing with his feet braced on top of the wall. Behind him, the Kyuubi brat whooped, wild and ravenous, and the rest of Zabuza's picked up the cry and the pace alike so that they charged and skidded down the slope with a roar in their throats.

Below, the battle at the gates seemed to pause as both sides looked up to see Zabuza's shinobi thundering down the mountainside. The Hanran-Hana-ha troops visibly rallied, falling on their opponents with renewed ferocity as the loyalists returned in kind: the most dangerous shinobi was a cornered shinobi.

The mad charge of Zabuza's shinobi abated at the wall, where those who couldn't make the jump scrambled up with chakra and determination. As he watched, one of his genin slipped off the surface of a large spike. His shinobi were not Kiri-born, who would as soon leave behind a comrade too weak to even make it to battle. The genin's teammate caught him by the arm in a strong grip and hauled him back up rather than let him fall on the waiting spikes or the shinobi following them.

 _Soft-hearted,_ he thought for the umpteenth time - but this time with a sharp indulgence rather than scorn. And then, _Fuck, they're rubbing off on me._

Zabuza needed to spill some fucking blood.

The three units already engaged in the battle were those of the captains Zabuza internally called the Tree Trio - Gekkeiju, Kaba, and Yanagi the elder - the all-grown-up and sufficiently deadly genin team of Nara Shikaku, because logically, if three units had to work together, it may as be the ones whose captains already had fantastic teamwork.

Zabuza didn't think they'd be too picky about who joined the party considering he was there to save their collective asses, so he leapt down to join the fray.

His unit crashed into the side of the blockade, and Zabuza landed on the ramparts with Kubikiribocho already scything towards the first shinobi blocking his path. "Suiton: Suiryuudan," he growled, and his dragon swept anyone too slow or too unwary to get out of the way off the wall.

The battle blurred. Zabuza'd fought a shitton in the past couple days, and this one was a slaughter like all the rest.

He paused for a moment when he caught a glimpse of Team Genbu, a strange patch of utter stillness in the chaos. Sai stood with his ink beasts ranging in a great circle, snapping at the enemy when they ventured near, and Gaara had his eyes closed as Hinata, at his shoulder, said evenly, "Eleven o'clock, four meters straight."

Gaara's hand clenched; Zabuza heard a sickening crunch and scream echoing out of the tower beneath their feet. "Three targets eliminated," said Hinata. "Eight o'clock, sixteen meters ahead."

Zabuza barked a laugh and decapitated the shinobi lunging at his back. What bloodthirsty little monsters Shisui had raised.

He leapt up over the edge of the ramparts, crouching on the side of the wall, and swung himself through the open window. He slung Kubikiribocho back over his shoulder, muttered, "Kirigakure no jutsu," and let his chakra and his mist billow out and envelope the team charging down the hallway at him. He hooked a kunai from his holster and prowled forward, and saturated the mist with his killing intent.

The team had frozen in place, to keep their footsteps from giving away their position - but it was their heartbeats that betrayed them, fluttering like rabbits' in their ribcages. Zabuza ghosted behind them and with one vicious jerk, slashed open the throat of the first. His teammate cried out in shock as the man's blood splattered the back of his neck, but by the time he whirled, katana first, Zabuza had already slipped back into the mist. The blade met air; the body hit the ground with a dull thud.

Were this a mission, Zabuza would draw it out, savor the hunt, but this was war, so he slit their throats one by one and stalked down the hallway in the cover of his mist.

"Ah," someone said, as the third shinobi slumped to the ground. "I thought I recognized that chakra."

Two jounin on opposing sides could easily slaughter hordes of genin, if not for each other. Zabuza supposed he should probably entertain this joker's efforts at distracting him, since he was kind of obligated to keep his unit alive. Zabuza flicked the blood off his blade absently and spun it around in his hand.

"What, you don't recognize me?" the other jounin said. His voice bounced through the mist, in the way Zabuza did so his prey could not tell where he came from. Heartbeat, breathing - those, too, were muffled and originless.

Zabuza prowled along the wall. "Hanemaru," he drawled. "Still kicking, huh, you little bastard?"

"I could say the same for you," said Hanemaru.

Zabuza flipped his kunai up and spun to catch Hanemaru's blade on its hooked edge as it hissed out of the mist with devastating speed. "The kodachi today," he noted.

Hanemaru let a self-deprecating smile tug the corner of his mouth. "Not enough room to swing the chokuto, but you know that. I don't see you using Kubikiribocho or a katana."

Zabuza grunted and stomped at Hanemaru's foot. Hanemaru shoved back to free his blade, leaping backwards and melting back into the fog.

Zabuza chased the echo of his footsteps, lunging around to cut Hanemaru off before he could dodge down another hallway and jabbing down towards his face "Don't tell me you're bored of me already," he growled as Hanemaru's blade intercepted his kunai.

Hanemaru huffed a laugh even as the pointiest part of Zabuza's kunai edged dangerously closely to his face. "You weren't being a great host."

Zabuza bared his teeth and bore down on the kunai. Hanemaru's kodachi trembled. "Think you're supposed to be the host, these days."

"Hmm," said Hanemaru consideringly, twisting out from under Zabuza. "You may be right." His blade flashed, and Zabuza batted it out of the way.

"Come on, Hanemaru," said Zabuza, catching the kodachi's blade on his kunai and crowding in close to the other jounin. "You can't think you can beat me in hand to hand."

Hanemaru snorted, twisting his hands into a seal. "Always so arrogant." He blew a mouthful of poison gas into Zabuza's face.

Zabuza beat a swift retreat via shunshin, shrouding himself in his mist again. His face was already beginning to itch, even under the bandages wrapping his mouth and nose. He split off a trio of mizu bunshin, then stood still and let them stalk forward once again. "Sure I can't convince you to switch sides?" he offered casually. "We can pick this up some other time."

Silence.

Zabuza frowned and canted his head to the side, but even then he couldn't hear so much as a heartbeat. He collected chakra in the back of his throat with a few hand seals and blew the mist out of the hallways with a weak fuuton. They were empty. "Damn," he growled aloud. He flipped his kunai around in his hand restlessly and stalked down the hallway, the bunshin doubling back to join the hunt.

Zabuza closed his eyes as he walked. All around him, only slightly muffled by the stone walls, the screeching of metal, the thud of bodies against each other, and the deafening explosions of tags and katon jutsu battered at his ears. Closer, though - Zabuza snapped his head to the side at the whisper of cloth over stone and kicked in the nearest door. It exploded, because of course it was trapped; he substituted his furthest bunshin as the other two sprayed back into water and snapped his kunai up to parry as Hanemaru burst through the smoke.

"Not bad," Hanemaru commented, as his kodachi skidded off the length of Zabuza's kunai. "All this ambient noise - thought it'd give you more of a pause."

Zabuza grunted. "You don't know me as well as you think you do."

Hanemaru's eyes went from languid to blank in less than a heartbeat. "No," he said. "I suppose not." He lashed out towards Zabuza's left side, and Zabuza flicked his kunai out, but Hanemaru struck a flurry of blows that forced Zabuza to give ground grudgingly and draw a second kunai to deflect.

Zabuza hopped backwards, flinging one of his kunai straight at Hanemaru's eyes, and huffed a laugh as the other jounin spun to the side to avoid it. "You mad?"

"A little," Hanemaru admitted, twirling his kodachi in a considering circle. "You're the last person I expected to defect."

"I tried to assassinate the Mizukage," Zabuza pointed out, dry as dust.

"I know," said Hanemaru patiently. "Why, though?"

Zabuza snorted. "Because he's a dick?"

Hanemaru didn't roll his eyes, but it was clearly a close thing.

"The old Academy tests. The bloodline massacres. The fucking caste system," Zabuza snapped. "And that's just scratching the surface. "You really think that lunatic should be Kiri's kage?"

"He did end up abolishing those tests," Hanemaru pointed out. "Because of you, I might add. And yes, the caste system is brutal, but our shinobi are stronger for it." He jerked his head towards Zabuza, though his blade never wavered. "You're proof caste isn't the final determinant. You were one of the Seven - the highest honor any Kiri shinobi can get besides Kage - and you threw it all away, for what? A grudge your childhood handlers pressed on you?"

Zabuza bared his teeth grimly. "Last I checked, I still have Kubikiribocho. I'm still a Swordsman."

Hanemaru pressed his lips together. "Do you really think Terumi's going to change anything?" he challenged. "She doesn't want to abolish the caste system - she just wants a new order. One with her on top."

Zabuza rolled his eyes. "When does she ever not want to be on top?"

"Zabuza!" Hanemaru glared

"Hanemaru!" Zabuza mimicked. "What, you think you're gonna sweet-talk me into switching sides again? At least buy me dinner, you cheap bastard."

"I would," snapped Hanemaru. "I will. Just - stop. You're tearing Kirigakure apart. The rest of the world won't ignore us ripping ourselves to pieces. If we lose the seas, we have nothing."

Zabuza snorted. "The rest of the world is plenty busy, and literally nobody's interested in Kiri's oceans right now. Look, you can stand aside or run like fucking Arihiro, or we'll go through you."

Hanemaru watched him grimly for a moment, then sank into the beginning stance for _Dance of the Falling Swallow._ "You know I can't let you pass."

Zabuza flipped his kunai to a backhanded grip. "Sorry," he offered, perfunctory, and lunged.

Hanemaru leaped, as Zabuza knew he would - one could not fall without first rising, and Zabuza palmed a second kunai from his holster as he swung with the first. But Hanemaru sprang again as soon as his foot touched the ground, flipping clean over Zabuza's head.

Zabuza jerked out of the way of Hanemaru's kodachi as it flashed towards his face, turning in to get inside of Hanemaru's reach. He grabbed for Hanemaru's sword wrist with his own hand as the other jounin landed, barely managing to snag his sleeve, and yanked. Hanemaru, featherweight little bastard that he was, hurtled over Zabuza's shoulder with a grunt, but flexible little bastard that he was, twisted around to land on his feet instead of slamming head-first into the floor. He tore his sleeve free of Zabuza's grip, throwing himself backwards when Zabuza lunged once again.

"Suiton: Rekkuu Suigeki!" snapped Hanemaru, flashing through seals, and Zabuza jerked back.

"Suiton: Mizu Tatsumaki," he growled, and the water ripped itself out of the air to shield him in a whirling tornado just in time to absorb the jets of water Hanemaru spat at him rapid-fire.

Hanemaru's jutsu deflected into the walls with a series of resounding crashes, sending chips of stone flying as they hammered deep gashes into the stone. The ceiling rattled, and chunks thundered down around them both. Zabuza dipped deeper into his chakra and shoved his jutsu towards Hanemaru. It blasted a hole clean through the wall and a good amount of the ceiling and ramparts above, and sent a shock of sunlight through the makeshift window. Zabuza caught sight of Hanemaru's foot as he disappeared around the corner and pounced after him.

Hanemaru whirled, his chakra rising in preparation for another jutsu, but Zabuza was too close - he aborted the jutsu, swinging the kodachi backhanded towards the unprotected gap in the armor under Zabuza's arm. Zabuza substituted clear with a chunk of stone, but this time Hanemaru got his suiton off, flinging a line of watery knives that exploded when they hit the walls or floor or ceiling and sent shrapnel spraying all over the corridor. Zabuza ducked, and stone shards bit into his arms around and under his vambraces.

Zabuza spat a flurry of water bullets in reply, lunging after Hanemaru when he somersaulted out of the way. Hanemaru's kodachi flicked out, but Zabuza hooked it out of the way with the edge of one kunai and plunged the second straight down into Hanemaru's chest.

He fell, from the force of Zabuza's blow, his ribs caved in and his organs torn and his blood and chakra alike leaking as if from a cracked pipe, and Zabuza watched him go down, followed him down so he crouched next to where Hanemaru crumbled.

"Faster - faster than I remember," Hanemaru panted and when he coughed, he didn't stop choking. Blood bubbled from his mouth in a thin stream.

"Yeah," said Zabuza gruffly. "Picked up a couple tips from another guy. He's a speedy little fucker, had to keep up somehow."

Hanemaru's hand loosened and clenched around his kodachi's hilt. "Gods - gods damn it," he got out.

Zabuza snorted. "At least you don't have to worry about all this bullshit anymore."

Hanemaru tipped his head to spit out a mouthful of blood but couldn't muster the strength to turn his head back. "I - I wouldn't - have minded - worrying about - about it - a little - a little longer."

A jounin like Hanemaru was too loyal - too fucking good for a piece of shit like Yagura. Zabuza left his broken body in the rubble and stalked further down the corridor.

Zabuza had never been in the Karikachi checkpoint, only gone through it, and he didn't have one of the handy white-eyes with him so he was resigned to picking his path through the checkpoint in search of something like a command center. A base this strategic warranted at least a score and a half of jounin, to lead its bolstered defensive force of around three thousand shinobi. Hanemaru had been alone; he hadn't seemed like the captain or jounin-in-charge so maybe he'd find whoever was leading the defense at the command center, but then again Zabuza was wandering the depths of this thing all on his lonesome, cut off from the unit he was supposed to be leading.

He coiled his chakra and sakki in tightly, ghosting down a set of stairs and stretching out his senses. Three bright sources of chakra bobbed towards him down the corridor. Zabuza paused just behind the corner and flipped the kunai around in his hand. He wouldn't even need chakra for this.

A genin rounded the corner and Zabuza struck. One of the genin's teammates yelped, high pitched, and then Zabuza was on him too, burying the kunai in his chest and yanking it free savagely; the third barely had a chance to raise a kunai defensively before Zabuza slashed her throat.

He flicked the blood off the blade as the last of the bodies hit the ground with a muted thump and continued his hunt.

He ran into a full squad next, two chuunin and six genin, when he kicked down the door to the room in which they were taking potshots through the windows at the battles beyond the walls. The chuunin whirled first, exchanging a kunai for a katana with remarkable speed, and the other twisted and spat a suiton at Zabuza instead.

"Shit," said one of the genin under his breath as Zabuza lunged.

The suiton gouged a smattering of dents in the wall behind him as he ducked under the chuunin's jutsu, slamming the hilt of his kunai into the man's ribs and sending him flying. The chuunin with the katana sprang forward before Zabuza could finish him, in unison with a genin on his other flank.

 _"Dance of the Silent Woodpecker,"_ she snapped, and her blade blurred.

"Cute," grunted Zabuza, leaning back to avoid the blade's first pass and batting aside the second as he sidestepped the much less threatening genin when the man - teen - lunged. He twisted around the kunoichi's third strike and snagged the genin's weapon hand in the same movement. "I learned that form when I was eight." He hurled the genin over his shoulder, but unlike Hanemaru, the genin was neither fast nor flexible and slammed headfirst into the ground with a sound like a dropped watermelon.

"Richi!" cried another genin, dropping his half of what looked like an overly complicated wire trap - jutsu combination with his remaining teammate to lunge at Zabuza blindly with a kunai.

"Wait - " snapped the last genin, her eyes wide with panic. Zabuza flung his kunai at her and caught the idiot genin by the neck midair, plucked the kunai from his hand, yanked until he heard and felt the tell-tale snap, and dropped him.

The jutsu-chuunun pounced, two bubbles of water around his hand designed to capture what it touched; Zabuza leaned out of the way of his swipes, gave him a good yank on his arm, and sent him headfirst into the wall, the jutsu splashing apart as he crumpled. Zabuza whipped around in time to deflect the katana off his kunai, baring his teeth in a sharp grin.

The katana-chuunin sucked in a breath sharply, jerking back. Zabuza didn't allow her retreat. He stepped over the downed genin, caught the katana on the hook of his kunai when she swiped at him.

The other genin trio took the opportunity to attack. Zabuza shoved the chuunin away, sending her stumbling across the room as he turned to deal with the genin. One went low with a katana, a second high with a tanto, and the third blurred through seals for a ninjutsu behind them. Zabuza appreciated their teamwork and forward thinking in actually coordinating their attacks, so he bonked the kunoichi with the tanto on the head a lot less heavily than he could have and gently mule kicked the katana-wielder into the third teammate, where they both slammed into the wall before the jutsu could be finished. One, two, three - out cold.

The chuunin pounced back in, but this time her strikes reflected her desperation - fast and hard and aimed none too carefully.

Zabuza parried languidly, indulgently, three strikes, then pressed forward into the chuunin's space with an aggressive jab, and the chuunin jerked backwards, unbalanced. "Sloppy," he growled. "Your center of balance is all over the place." He gave her a good shove to emphasize, and she careened backwards. To her credit, she managed to turn it into a roll and landed in a low crouch; Zabuza slammed the hilt of his kunai into the side of her head and suggested, "Fix that," as she slumped to the ground.

They weren't half bad - could do with some polishing. Zabuza eyed the slumped bodies, considering. He probably should kill them. He'd killed half their number already, and the ones who were out cold would try to kill him if they woke up and saw him again, but it was kind of a waste to slit their throats now. It wasn't like they were much of a threat anyways.

Zabuza shrugged and wandered back into the hallway. He'd kill them next time.

The next chakra source he sensed was muted, clearly potent, and hovered behind a set of closed doors two hallways down. Zabuza gave stealth a metaphorical middle finger and shoved the doors open, strolling in with his kunai looped loosely around his finger.

There was one figure in the room, who had been reclined in a chair balanced on its two back legs with his sandals propped up on the edge of the table. At Zabuza's entrance, he let the chair drop back onto all four legs with a loud crack and stood, one hand dropping to the table on which a pair of sickles lay. Zabuza recognized those blades, just like he recognized that shock of sea green hair.

Today was chock fucking full of encounters with old friends, wasn't it?

Hidachi was a master of his blades, which he sharpened with wind to create a razor edge that not even he could see, and those fucker _hurt._ Zabuza hated sparring with him as much as he hated sparring with Zabuza, because Zabuza had a blade that Hidachi couldn't cut through - or, at least, didn't stay cut through.

Hidachi looked at him. He looked at Hidachi.

"How about we don't," suggested Hidachi, "and say we did?"

Zabuza paused, considering. "You gonna run back out there and kill someone?"

Hidachi shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know."

"How about you don't," suggested Zabuza, "and say you did?"

Hidachi shrugged again. "Fine," he said. "I'm sure there's some urgent matter in the kitchens. Poison gas or whatever that needs investigating."

"Great," said Zabuza.

He eyed the far door. Hidachi glanced purposefully at the door behind Zabuza's back.

What followed was an awkward kind of circular shuffling, because neither of them was willing to give the other their back. Zabuza bared his teeth in a grin. "Just like old times, ain't it?"

"Quite," said Hidachi. "See you around."

Zabuza left through one door, Hidachi through the other. He paused, in case the other jounin'd thought to catch him off guard, but no attack followed. Hidachi was always looking out for his own skin. Minimal effort, that guy. He'd been more shocked than anyone else when he made jounin; he probably would have refused the promotion if he could have, but no one said 'no' to Yagura and walked away with his skin intact.

Especially not the members of the Kiri Hanran, but at least they'd made it out with their lives.

He turned down another hallway, went through a sparring room, three sets of stairs, and four teams ranging from tokujo to genin, and ended up against one of the walls, on the other side of which he could hear the rumbling of the battle outside.

An explosion knocked Zabuza off his feet, throwing him against the wall, and he substituted right before impact. Rubble crashed down from a brand new gaping hole in the wall. He considered the probability of finding the jounin-in-charge still inside the base - slim - and took it as an opportunity to rejoin the fight outside and launched himself through.

He surfaced far closer to the center of the checkpoint, on the side facing west of Kirigakure, and his hand found Kubikiribocho easily.

"Shit," muttered the probably-tokujo in front of him, eyeing him and the somewhat mauled Hana-ha chuunin on his other side. The chuunin was one of Zabuza's. The possibly-tokujo whipped a kunai trailing an exploding tag at Zabuza's face and bolted.

Zabuza flipped Kubikiribocho up to shield himself, and when the blast abated, the maybe-tokujo had fled. Zabuza leaned to the side to avoid a flurry of shuriken from some other teams' skirmish and told the mauled chuunin, "Get. Medical crew's in the back, you look like shit."

"My squad," protested the chuunin, twisting to look behind him as Zabuza loomed over him. "We got separated from the rest of the platoon, I was buying them time to get away - "

Attachment. Bah. "They look good and away," Zabuza assured him. "Are you going or am I dragging you?"

The chuunin turned pale, but that might have been the blood loss. Zabuza leaned over the side of the wall and barked, "Hey! Come get your chuunin, he's bleeding out."

Cue: the seven genin of the chuunin's squad, busting ass to run him to the back of the battlefield.

On the very far end of the ramparts, Temari's tessen flashed as she swung it, sending an entire team of loyalists stumbling backwards from the gale force. Shisui was a tiny speck on the ground, dueling a kunoichi who must have been Ketsugan from the pair of dark grey shoto she wielded. She was fast and vicious, but so was Shisui. No point interrupting his fun.

The wall rumbled beneath his feet, and Zabuza clung to the stone only with chakra as he chanced a glance down. Far below, the ground cracked, a plume of steam shooting into the air as it widened. Zabuza whirled without hesitation, charging back along the length of the wall. "Unit 15!" he roared. "On me! Fucking fall back, now, now, now!"

Shinobi hated few things more than to retreat, but Zabuza could see the cracks widening and spreading with increasing speed. "Fifteen, off the wall, get away from the wall! Right fucking now!" He slammed Kubikiribocho into a loyalist shinobi with a blade poised over one of his unit, batting him into the side of the rampart. He yanked the wounded kunoichi upright, gave her a good shove in the direction of the mountain slope, and shouted, "Go, go!"

The wall began to rattle in earnest, and the battle on the ground devolved into mass confusion as the shinobi closest, on both sides, tried to scramble away. Zabuza scooped another shinobi up from where he'd been pinned by a douton and tossed him bodily towards the others on the slope, battered back a pair of loyalist chuunin pursuing a team of his genin, and kicked a Kiri genin off the top of the ramparts.

Shisui appeared on top of the wall in the whirl of a shunshin, flashing back and forth pulling shinobi out of battles as the walls shook apart under his feet. A splash of black and white dove - one of Sai's birds, plucking another from the epicenter.

With a deafening roar, the ground beneath the gates of the Karikachi-touge checkpoint opened up beneath the wall and swallowed it whole, and the middlemost chunk of the entire thing crashed down into a lake of molten lava that hissed and spat boiling miasma at those unfortunate enough to be too close.

Mei's shinobi exploded up out of the ground, falling on the loyalists from behind, as Mei herself emerged from the depths of the burning, melting checkpoint in her signature battle dress as if she hadn't a care in the world, and certainly not as if she'd just singlehandedly wiped out a couple hundred shinobi and rendered moot a previously impenetrable stronghold.

"Attack!" Zabuza ordered, and his unit surged forward once again with renewed energy. "But stay away from the fucking lava!"

He strode forward across the half sunken ramparts and roared, "Mei!"

Mei shot him a coy smile and sauntered to meet him. "You remember those smuggling Passways, don't you?" she purred. "From your dear Juu? This one turned out rather useful, don't you think, once we extended it a little?"

"Good fucking gods, Mei, next time give us a heads up if you're going to pull that crap!" Zabuza snapped.

Mel waved a hand dismissively. "It'd have taken too long," she deflected. "Besides, it looks like your shinobi are fine."

"Only because I recognized the signs of your little hell jutsu," Zabuza growled. "If this were Yanagi's unit, you'd've boiled them alive."

"Relax," said Mei, trailing her fingers across his back from shoulder to shoulder. "I imagine it won't be much of a fight now. Let's go find someone able to negotiate terms of surrender, shall we?"

It was arrogant as shit for Mei to assume the loyalists would surrender the minute she arrived on the battlefield. Aggravatingly, she was right.

"She's really something," said Shisui, standing at ease next to Zabuza atop the highest surviving tower. Far below them, Mei stood flanked by Ao and Fukaya, conferring with the Tree Trio and a delegation from the loyalists. Shisui had delegated the nitty gritty negotiating to them so he and Zabuza could lurk high above and keep an eye out for a last ditch assault. Zabuza thought Shisui was just leveraging his secret identity and position as _Captain of Covert Intelligence_ to get away from the politics, but he was generous enough to include Zabuza so who was he to complain?

"Mei has that effect," Zabuza agreed, watching the particular way she tossed her head to get her hair to ripple just so down her back. The captain in charge of the fallen base paused very briefly before continuing his determined if aimless negotiations. Dealing with the mad kage made sure Yagura's commanders had nerves of steel as well as formidable battle capabilities, but, well. Mei. Besides, she and everyone else knew what the captain would face if he went back to the Mizukage having failed.

He turned away, disinterested in the whole mess. Mei would sort it out in that way she had of gently bulldozing everyone around her, the Tree Trio would dig their heels in just enough for Hana-ha shinobi not to get stuck with the scut work since they did most of the heavy lifting, they'd all settle down for a respite and march on the village proper once everyone'd regrouped and reported in.

Of course, once he turned around, he was faced with a beaming blond brat, his grin visible even under the bandages swathed over the lower half of his face. Zabuza glared at him. If there was ever a temptation to quit bandaging his own face, this was it. The brat was as fresh as a fucking daisy, even though his pink-haired girl-child teammate was passed out against his shoulder and Shisui's littlest cousin leaned his head against the battlements with his eyes closed. Zabuza had the vague feeling that they were supposed to have stayed out of the battle, but the latter two had fresh bandages and horrifically mussed hair that told of actions otherwise. "Idiots," Zabuza hissed at them, even though it was completely wasted on the only one who was awake to hear him.

Beside him, Shisui sighed, long-suffering. "All of you should have stayed out of the thick of the fighting," he admonished mildly.

Zabuza transferred his glare to Haku, who flushed faintly. "I did, Zabuza-san," he protested. "A squad attempted to attack the medical crews, and other than Team Byakko, everyone else was occupied."

"We helped," interjected Temari before Zabuza could rip his apprentice a new one. "Ichi barely had to lift a finger."

Neji, sitting crosslegged next to Haku, muttered something under his breath that sounded a lot like, "Ichi doesn't need to lift a finger to use his kekkei-genkai." Temari nudged him subtly in the ribs with her knee but looked amused. Working on the systematic oppression of any sense of humor, that one.

The Silent Triad were twined around each other with airs of satisfied bloodlust, acknowledgement of a mission accomplished, and deep relief at the conclusion of the battle, respectively. Sai and Hinata had their shoulders pressed against each other unconsciously, and Gaara sprawled his head against Temari's leg and his ankles in the space under Hinata's knees. The Ichibi's container had eyes half lidded in satiation and Zabuza half expected him to start purring at any second. Bloodthirsty little creature. Zabuza wondered just how many shinobi he'd crushed alive.

"We stayed out of range of most of the battle as well," Sai volunteered. "Our team is suited for long distance attacks."

"Yes, I know," said Shisui patiently. "That was - well done of you three."

Zabuza recognized the uneasiness in Shisui's voice anyways. Gaara hadn't lost control of his bijuu in a good amount of time, but that was probably because he was feeding it a regular diet of gruesome deaths, even with that month-long lull spent undercover, that kept it satisfied. Or maybe it was about the childhood thing, since the Hyuuga heiress was kind of delicate. Gods knew the ink boy was coping just fine.

He lost patience to deal with insubordinate whelps and turned back around to see if Mei had wrapped things up yet. No dice. He sighed. "May as well start sorting arrangements for the night," he said to Shisui.

The blank leopard-mask swivelled to face him. "May as well," Shisui agreed. A dash of blood and chakra, and a crow winged out of the fucking ether or wherever it was that summons came from. "Hang on to Shoyu a sec, will you?" Shisui asked, distracted, so Zabuza raised his forearm for the summon to alight on while Shisui dug a pencil and paper out of his back pouch.

"I am not a bird perch," Zabuza growled. "Ow!" He snapped, as the blasted thing pecked at his arm just where his sleeve had been split by one of Hanemaru's water knives.

Shisui ignored him. "You want to borrow Ponzu, or are you going to talk to Nishigawa yourself?" he asked absently, scribbling at his missive.

"Ponzu," Zabuza conceded grumpily. The less Konohan nonsense he had to deal with today, the better. At least he could delegate the tedious tasks of headcounts and scouting out habitable bunking sites to his jounin, who would then delegate it to the tokujo or chuunin.

Also, food. Zabuza was starving.

In terms of off-the-rocker, homicidal jinchuuriki hell-children, Gaara was a useful one to have because he didn't sleep. At all. Zabuza wasn't sure if this feat was meant to be terrifying or impressive, but at least a guard rotation at night wasn't mandatory. Zabuza also didn't recall exactly when they got stuck with all nine of the pack brats, but a glance told him the non-Gaara ones'd all be next to useless until they got some sleep and recharged their chakra.

"Watch 'em. Nobody tries shit with them, got it?" he directed at Gaara.

Gaara, surrounded by the unconscious bodies of the rest of the brats circled up in their cloaks like a pack of fucking puppies, nodded solemnly.

"Great," said Zabuza, fighting down the sheer nausea that whatever this sight or his lack of food was causing. "I'll be back."

He stepped out and almost tripped over Shisui, sitting out in the hallway just beyond the door. He had an arm tucked around the Hyuuga girl, both their masks still on, but she had clearly fallen asleep. He raised an eyebrow.

"She saw a lot. She's fine," Shisui said lightly in a way that implied that nothing was fine but that Zabuza couldn't do anything about it anyways. Zabuza cast a suspicious glance down the hallway. "I don't think anyone will come down this way, but I'll hear them," Shisui added, to his unspoken comment.

Zabuza shrugged. "I'm going to head down and see what's going on," he said.

Shisui hummed acknowledgement. "Don't pick any fights."

Zabuza rolled his eyes. He was all fought through for the day, thanks.

Most of the shinobi had crammed themselves into every available room to sleep - the base had started out with three thousand loyalists; between Zabuza and the Tree Trio's units, that was another two thousand, plus Mei's two units added another fifteen hundred or so. Accounting for losses, that was still around double the capacity the base was designed to house, and a good chunk of it was now under cooling volcanic sludge. The mutual agreement that sleeping was not allowed in the halls was only the reason that Zabuza did not trip over a shinobi every other step, and why a large portion of their troops were roughing it outside in pitched tents.

Zabuza made it down to the lowest levels without incident, aside from some clearly suspicious glares from shinobi of Hana-ha and Hanran alike. Zabuza hadn't run into any loyalists, and suspected Mei made them decamp outdoors - victors' spoils: an actual roof. Her chakra signature was familiar and easy to find, even muted among thousands of others, once he reached the lowest basement floor. She was even easier to find when Zabuza spotted the guards - tokujo, probably - hovering outside the room she had commandeered. One of them stepped forward as Zabuza approached, hand on the hilt of his sword, and said, "Turn back, Momochi."

Zabuza eyed him up and down and didn't recognize him. "Mei in there?" he asked, as if he couldn't practically taste the bite-and-burn of her chakra.

"You can't go in," the tokujo said.

Zabuza considered the tokujo. The tokujo stared back at him calmly. "You can get out of my way," Zabuza offered, "or I'll make you move." And hey, no sakki or anything. Shisui would be proud of him for playing nice.

The tokujo didn't appreciate his efforts, angling himself slightly for a better draw.

Fortunately for all parties but mostly the tokujo, the door opened. "Zabuza, quit terrorizing my guards," said Mei, amused.

Zabuza raised an eyebrow. "They would know if I was trying to terrorize them," he pointed out, as he stalked past the guard. Mei smiled, letting the door close behind him. "He's not a bad one," Zabuza admitted after some consideration, following her in.

"He's rather promising, I think," Mei agreed, sitting at the lone table. The overhead lights flickered gently, and this far underground the scent of damp earth was impossible to escape.

Zabuza sprawled in the chair opposite her. "Where's Ao?"

Mei waved her hand carelessly. "In charge of dealing with the loyalists. He's relatively fresh; I had him stay out of the battle." She paused, tilting her head down to eye Zabuza mischievously. "How's the captain Juu?"

Zabuza thought about Shisui sitting up the hallway with a nine year old Hyuuga, despite the nonstop skirmishes from the start of the march until this last battle. But Mei wasn't his comrade even if she was his friend, so instead of 'tired' he said, "Pissed, because your little lava stunt interrupted his battle with Ketsugan."

Mel laughed, delighted. "He's a fiery one," she said approvingly. "I'd love to steal him over."

Zabuza snorted. "He won't go," he said. "He's got bones to pick with someone in Konoha."

"They all do," Mei complained, rolling her eyes dramatically, but she had the exact same kind of beef in Kiri so she had no room to judge.

Zabuza watched the flicker of lights as a momentary silence fell. "Ran into Hanemaru earlier," he said at last.

"Oh?" Mei raises an eyebrow. "And how is he?"

"Dead," answered Zabuza.

Mei nodded, her eyes going distant.

"He didn't think you were planning to change the Village once Yagura's gone," he added idly.

Mel raised an amused eyebrow. "I should think that Yagura being gone would change the Village."

"Remember when we were new genin?" he said abruptly. "Well," he amended, "I was seven and a new genin and you were an Academy bratling."

Mei let the jab pass with an amused glance.

"We said we'd make it so no one looked down on us," he continued. "We said we'd make it to the fucking top and tear it all down, every stone, make a new, stronger Kiri without the rot inside. No castes, no noble elite, no more warships. No fucking Academy kids' corpses in the streets because no one gives a shit if they live or die until they start to reek."

"We were fools," said Mei wistfully. "Young, idealistic children. Raze everything and there's nothing left to rebuild - take down the nobles and the entire society collapses. Kiri is old, Zabuza, she's set in her ways. Bring a shark to a freshwater lake and it'll die."

Zabuza snorted. "Then what are you trying to do, Mei? All those grunts who raised your flag - you think they're gonna be happy with the status quo when you've cozied up with the ones who trampled them into the mud?"

"I meant we need the nobles," Mei snapped, "not that everything is going back to the way it is under mad Yagura. But those clans are too powerful; even now, they're waiting to see who comes out on top, and I can't afford not to have their support when the dust settles."

"They'll call you a sellout," said Zabuza, leaning back. "They'll call you a hypocrite and a traitor."

"Let whoever wants to say so to my face," Mei said dismissively. "I'm sure I'll be able to change their mind.

Yeah, or melt it into sludge.

"Zabuza," said Mei, meeting his eyes. "No more Academy death matches. No more clan witch hunts. No more human experiments. That, I can promise."

Zabuza wasn't Kiri; he had no right to demand more. That would have to be enough. "Yeah," he said. "Okay."

Mei watched him curiously. "What does Senju expect to do in Konoha, then?" she asked. "It doesn't quite sound like the kind of situation where she wants to shake up the entire societal structure and toss it to the crows."

Zabuza shrugged. "She wants the truth about how the Sandaime Hokage kicked the bucket to get out, and Shimura ten meters under, probably," he said vaguely. "Probably smooth sailing compared to Kiri's stack of shit."

"Ah," said Mei. "The Successor. Did you know - I don't think she's been in a single skirmish the entire war."

"She's a medic-nin," Zabuza pointed out, dodging Mei's exploratory fishing. "The fuck would she join a skirmish for?"

Mei raised an eyebrow delicately but didn't press even though he knew that she knew what Senju could do on a battlefield. Instead, she withdrew a flask from gods knew where and unscrewed the cap to take a long pull. She offered it to Zabuza.

Zabuza, reasonably sure she wouldn't poison him just because she could by breathing into the thing, took it. It was sake, cold, and it burned down his throat. "Since when do you carry this shit around?" he demanded, passing it back.

Mel set it on the table before her with a wry smile. "Sometimes," she said, with more honesty and vulnerability than he'd seen from her since they were children and ready to fight the world, "I need a reminder that I can feel."

There were probably better ways to cope with the ability to annihilate comrades and enemies alike without receiving so much as a scratch, but Zabuza sure hadn't found any. "Eh," he said.

"Come back to Kirigakure," she said suddenly, watching him from beneath hooded eyes. "She needs you."

Zabuza grunted and wished he hadn't given the flask back. "I'm here, ain't I?"

Mei shook her head. "Not for a battle, not for a month. This is just the beginning."

Zabuza's mouth twisted into an involuntary snarl. "You forgettin' something?"

"Put aside your honor for one day," she fired back. "One day - and come back to Kiri."

Zabuza snorted and was promptly thrown clear out of his chair when the ground heaved.

Mei's flask went flying as she grabbed the table, anchoring herself with chakra. The room rattled violently, the sparse furniture toppling one by one with loud crashes. Zabuza landed in a crouch, sinking his chakra into the ground to anchor himself, and shouted above the dull roar of the earth convulsing, "The hell is that?"

The rumbling stopped. Mei stared about the room warily, then when the shaking did not resume, strode to the door and yanked it open. "Makoto," she said airily to the tokujo sprawled on the floor of the corridor, "Be a dear and find out what happened for me? And a status on any additional injuries." She closed the door firmly once again.

Zabuza rose gingerly and angled himself as best as he could towards Shisui's room and said, "If you see me, tell Hachi to get a bird in the air." If the Hyuuga brats didn't see him, no big loss - Mei or Shisui would pass along information.

The brats were faster than tokujo Makoto, about which Zabuza was very smug. A black mouse squirmed under the door, and scampered to Zabuza, who fished a battered scrap of paper for it to splatter against.

Mei, over the neck of her retrieved flask, eyed it curiously. "Cute trick," she said.

Zabuza read the cramped script and said, "Huh." He passed it over to Mei, who traded him the sake for it.

Her eyebrows rose as she read it once, then a second time. "Medic-nin, hm?" she said. "Got impatient, did she, to literally punch a hole through the Hakkouda Mountains?"

"Must've been," Zabuza agreed blankly, staring at the report that explained impersonally that the minor earthquake had resulted from one Senju Tsunade splitting a mountain apart after arriving at the battle in which loyalist forces had decimated most of Unit 12. "Or just really pissed." He took a slug of the sake because damnit, that meant the little magpie captain'd had a point about going 'through' the mountains.

"Hm," said Mei again, a new wariness in her eyes. She turned as a knock on the door rapped out sharply. "Yes, come in," she called, and the tokujo edged his way into the room.

"I have the report, sir," he offered, clasping his hands behind his back professionally.

Zabuza set Mei's flask back down on the table with a decisive tap. "I'll show myself out," he drawled, sweeping up his report. "Looks like there's gonna be a lot of cleanup."

Mei swallowed a grimace. "It does," she agreed. "Do try not to make a bigger mess of it."

"You been in the Inner Village before?" Zabuza asked. The trail before them would crest in a kilometer, and behind them, thousands of footsteps echoed, muffled by the dirt. Mei's troops had gone first, and the eldest Yanagi's trailed at the very rear.

"Nah," said Shisui, keeping pace at his side at the head of their column, some dozen meters ahead of Zabuza's unit. "Never made it this far. Had a mission that reached the port of the Lower City, once."

Zabuza grunted, eyeing him with amusement. "We have a coast guard that's supposed to stop that from happening."

"I know," said Shisui smugly. "That's what the coast guard said."

Zabuza barked a laugh as they reached the height of the trail. "Well, since you never made it this far," he said, and jerked his head. "Here's Kiri."

Shisui took in the view, mist blanketing the valley below them, the glimmer of rippling water among vividly green grass. The sun rose above the mountains opposite, lighting a soft glow in the mist. One section had caved in, a dark jagged crack in the rocky walls where Senju had apparently lost her temper. "It's beautiful," he said at last.

That was true enough. "They call it the City of a Thousand Lakes," Zabuza offered. "But it's more like a couple dozen lakes and a shitton of ponds."

"A thousand?" Naruto demanded. Zabuza wished he could have pretended he'd forgotten about the loud blond brat, but he was too loud, even if he wasn't currently blond. "Do they got fish in them? Or sharks?"

"Most of them have fish," Haku answered helpfully before Zabuza could try igniting the brat's hair spontaneously with his glare. "Some of the saltwater lakes have sharks, but most sharks can't survive in freshwater."

"Why not?" Sakura asked curiously. She had a bandage wrapped across her face diagonally, but it did not seem to bother her.

"They, ah," Haku hesitated. "They...swell up and...die," he finished delicately.

Naruto's eyes widened. "Do they explode?" he asked with all the enthusiasm of a baby shinobi who hadn't seen enough gory ways a living thing could expire.

"No," said Haku patiently. "They just bloat and rot." His nose wrinkled delicately. "It's a slow and dismal ending."

"Oh," said Naruto, subdued.

Zabuza rolled his eyes at Shisui. Shisui huffed a silent laugh. "Hey. Punk," Zabuza called. "What do the next couple kilometers look like?"

Neji's step hesitated, and the rest of the pack reacted instantly. Temari drifted backwards to stay in step with him, and Haku's chakra surged. Hinata's head snapped up, Gaara's eyes narrowed, and Sai reached surreptitiously for his tanto. Sasuke' s hand snapped back for the hilt of the katana that was still much too big for him, Naruto stopped bouncing quite so much, and Sakura near jumped out of her own skin. Zabuza rolled his eyes again, although he did stretch out his senses, just in case there was an ambush waiting in his periphery.

"There are several hundred loyalist shinobi lining the road as it enters the village," Neji reported in a voice tinged with incredulity. "However, they do not seem to be attacking. The Hanran units are approaching, but none of them have drawn weapons."

"Konoha, you wanna send a crow?" Zabuza suggested. "Ask Mei what's up. I have a hunch." He raised his voice. "Unit 15, halt!" he roared behind him. "Take a break, but be ready to move!" His shinobi raised a ragged cry of acknowledgement, and a couple hundred meters back, the column shuddered to a stop.

Shisui summoned Dashi, who complained loudly, "Caw," at the disturbance. He fixed Zabuza with a beady, black-eyed stare and tilted his head accusingly, like Zabuza was the one to blame for him getting summoned.

"Oh, hush," said Shisui fondly, running a finger over the crow's head. "It's just a short jaunt down there. You might even get to dodge a couple kunai."

"Caw," said Dashi, unimpressed, but stuck his leg for Shisui's scrap of paper.

"Hey. Brats," Zabuza barked, and seven heads swivelled to face him. The two white-eyes didn't bother. "Stand down. There's no immediate threat."

"You said you had a theory?" Shisui asked, raising his arm to give Dashi a lift. The crow took off smoothly, with none of the excessive flapping the feathered rats always did when Zabuza was the one they were perching on. Zabuza glared.

"They smell the blood in the water," Zabuza answered. "Karikachi and Rashiri both fell. Senju punched a fucking hole in the mountains. It's inevitable that Mei and Yagura'll throw down; not even the noble clans're willing to get in the middle of that. They'll wait it out, take whatever blowback as long as they survive."

"The 'wait and see' tactic again," Shisui noted dryly. "It's in vogue."

"Yeah, the mad Kage wasn't popular even before Kiri shinobi started dying in droves," Zabuza muttered. "Some will fight until the last breath. Others'll pretend the vows to serve both Kage and Village keep their honor intact if they don't pick up a katana."

Shisui tipped his head to the side. "Pretend? That's very cynical of you, Z. What's that make you?"

"A traitor and a piece of shit," Zabuza answered dryly. "I don't know. Is it better to live without honor or without a conscience?"

"That's very deep," said Shisui, very seriously. "Please, tell me more."

"Fuck off," Zabuza snarled. If they hadn't been between battles and several thousand kunai-happy shinobi, he'd have made a good attempt at eviscerating him.

Fortunately for Shisui and his continued survival, Dashi swooped out of the sky, practically on their heads, and told his summoner irritatedly, "Caw. Caw."

"She says we're clear," Shisui said, plucking the paper from his summons.

"Yeah, I heard," Zabuza muttered. "Let's go."

The full might, more or less, of the Hanabi-ha participating in Kiri's civil war assembled in the training grounds on the edges of the village. Because they were the squirrel shinobi, hundreds of them perched in the trees as well as on the ground and made the back of Zabuza's neck prickle when he stalked past.

"This is awesome. We're sleeping in a tree!" Naruto enthused, wobbling precariously as Zabuza glared up at the entire pack perched in the forks of a tree with only the shreds of browning leaves still clinging on to its branches. Sai grabbed Naruto by the back of his shirt before he could fall out of the tree.

"Stay," Zabuza ordered. "Princess, you're in charge. Girl, try to keep - those two - in line." He gestured at the offending members of Team Obnoxious.

Temari and Sakura exchanged glances and said, "Hai," in unison. Sasuke rolled his eyes, long-suffering. Naruto was oblivious.

The Ichibi jinchuuriki had for some reason sprawled out along a limb with his cheek pressed up against the rough bark and his eyes already half-lidded. Zabuza eyed him warily and said, "Keep an eye out, midget." Gaara blinked. Zabuza left them to it and went to go find the Command tent.

Senju's captains had all made it through the weeklong assault intact but battered, though Haraguni's right arm was strapped across her chest in a sling and Katai of Unit 19 was the chalky kind of pale that spoke of significant blood loss. The only one of them that showed no sign of injury was, annoyingly, Uchiha fucking Itachi. If Zabuza hadn't known that Itachi had led the assault on the southern Rashiri-touge blockade, he could have sworn the middlemost Uchiha had gone off to take a nap somewhere because he looked as fresh as a godsdamned daisy.

Senju, notably, was absent, as was the head of her Guard and Shizune. Instead, Nara stood at the head of their makeshift table with his arms crossed over his chest and Hatake a pace back from him, the rest of the captains ringing the tent loosely. "I know the past couple of days has been busy," said Nara. "But I need you all to submit your personnel status reports by tomorrow morning."

Kasasagi the magpie captain stifled a groan and Yanagi the elder raised her eyes to the roof of the tent. Zabuza, having foisted off his paperwork to Nishigawa at the first given opportunity, watched them smugly.

"Per agreement with Terumi," Nara continued, "Our shinobi will hold positions that have already been cleared. We will, however, be sending a small squad with the Hanran who will assist in the mission to capture or kill the Mizukage. Hana-An-010, Uchiha, Momochi, and Hatake, have you named a successor to your positions in the event that you do not return?"

 _Have you named a successor_ was the shinobi wartime equivalent of _have you updated your will?_

"Is it wise to commit a commander and three captains?" demanded Kasasagi, shooting a narrow-eyed glare sideways at Zabuza.

"Mei wanted Tsunade-hime and half the captains to join in," said Hatake. "Tsunade-hime was able to argue her down."

Nara nodded at him before turning expectantly to Shisui. "A successor, Juu?"

"Hana-An-2022," answered Shisui, clasping his hands behind his back. "Unless Houki Usui recovers."

"I will nominate jounin Mayu Akiba to my position," said Itachi.

"If I bite it, Kitajima," drawled Zabuza.

"Not Nishigawa?" Yanagi the younger asked curiously.

"Nope," said Zabuza. Nishigawa'd probably worry himself into an early grave before a loyalist could kill him if he got any more responsibility. "Kitajima."

"My successor will be Uchiha," said Hatake unexpectedly. "If neither of us survive, then Katai will take my place."

The Tree Trio traded surreptitious glances. Katai frowned at the map on the table. Uchiha the middlemost looked as blank as an empty scroll. If Uchiha lived and Hatake didn't, the Hanabi-ha would have a fucking sixteen year old commander who could probably kick all of their asses, and that was both hilarious and somewhat terrifying.

"All right," said Nara. "From my understanding, the four of you will be infiltrating the Mizukage's tower alongside Terumi and her strike team."

"He'll be in the catacombs," said Zabuza.

"That was really dramatic," said Shisui, lounging in the much smaller tent the Hana-ha Mizukage-killing strike team had commandeered. His kunai lay in neat rows on the ground before him as he sharpened his tanto methodically. "'He'll be in the catacombs.' What is he, a zombie?"

"He's a jinchuuriki," Zabuza responded, squinting down the length of Kubikiribocho.

"Ha," said Shisui. "Good one."

"Karatachi Yagura is a jinchuuriki," Zabuza repeated slowly, giving Shisui an incredulous look over the edge of his blade. "The container of the Sanbi."

Itachi, leaning over a battered map, glanced up carefully.

Shisui paused, whetstone poised over his tanto. "What?"

Hatake swivelled from his seat at the tiny table in the center of the tent. "Karatachi Yagura is _what?"_

Hmm. It seemed that Zabuza had stepped in what they called _deep shit._ "Didn't Mei tell you that? When you entered whatever hell-contract you made with her?"

" _No,"_ Shisui hissed.

"Well," echoed Hatake blankly as his eye sharpened. "I thought the Sanbi was...lost. After its previous host was killed."

"I at least expected the Sanbi jinchuuriki to be younger," Itachi said thoughtfully. "It would have explained his lack of participation in the war."

"Did she tell you anything about Yagura?" Zabuza demanded. "Battle tactics, abilities, weaknesses?"

"Close to mid-range fighter, big chakra reserves, water-natured but equally versed in wind, prefers bojutsu," Shisui reeled off. "Suggested tactics include containment in one area and suppression with douton or raiton until he runs out of chakra so Mei can bury him, basically. Nothing about battling a jinchuuriki unless you count the bit about his chakra reserves."

"She doesn't think she needs us to kill him," Hatake surmised. "Or she assumes we can be used as cannon fodder. Stay out of their way when they battle."

Itachi nodded, staring at the side of the tent thoughtfully. "Hai," said Shisui. "But, Z - wouldn't she know you'd tell us, even if she didn't?"

"She doesn't know," said Zabuza. "There's no way in hell she doesn't know he's a jinchuuriki, but she doesn't know that I know. Everyone involved in the sealing died within a year, and Yagura sure as hell never told his jounin what he was; I only found out what he was when I tried to kill him and he pulled out a freaking bijuu on me."

Hatake exchanged a long glance with Itachi. "Zabuza," said Shisui slowly. "What does that mean?"

Zabuza had no fucking clue, except…

 _Put aside your honor for one day and come back to Kiri._

 _Gods damn it, Mei._ Zabuza grimaced. "It means that if you're still alive once Yagura's dead, Mei might try to kill you."


	16. Chapter 16

[16] Haku Gets Front Row Seats To A Lot Of Really Crazy Shit

He's got a lot on his plate and not a lot of sleep. #LetHakuTakeANap

* * *

MISSION REPORT D-351

Contact with enemy combatants: seven (7) incidents.

Enemy combatants from origin: Konohagakure (2); Iwagakure (1); Kumogakure (2); Takigakure (1).

Status of Operative Cat-15:

Minor injuries sustained from previously reported contact with enemy combatants, self-treated.

One broken bone treated by civilian doctor.

Status of AT2:

Approximate age-appropriate growth continued. Social skills unable to be measured.

Self-sustaining skills acquisition rated as ahead of average age group performance in both speed and retention in all areas except social development, which remains unmeasured.

Beginning-level combat and infiltration training continued. Combat skills acquisition rated as ahead of average age group performance in both speed and retention.

AT2 determined capable to be left without supervision for short periods of time (1-48 hours) but long-term separation unadvised.

Long term observation of [REDACTED] conducted.

Conclusion: largely civilian town with low shinobi traffic. Several possible avenues for scavenging food. Several possible avenues for escape. Several possible locations for base camp establishment.

Last contact with TAP73I: 48 days. No emergency contact made.

Plan of action: return to [REDACTED] and shift TAP73I base camp to [REDACTED].

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

* * *

Haku wrapped his fur cloak around himself more securely and shivered. The genin from Konoha draped themselves across the branches with ease and fearlessness, and even Gaara and Temari looked comfortable enough, but Haku felt his attention snap back to full alertness every time the branch beneath him bent and swayed dangerously in the wind.

"D'you want mine?" Naruto asked sleepily when Haku shivered hard enough to set his branch trembling and subsequently jarred himself to full wakefulness once again. "I c'n share w'Shi."

Sasuke made a muffled noise of protest and burrowed down deeper into his cloak.

"No, thank you Roku-kun," said Haku quietly. He eyed Naruto's cloak, which had quite a bit of mud and even some twigs tangled in the fur.

When Haku had met Zabuza for the first time, Zabuza had wasted no time teaching him to mould chakra. He'd described chakra as 'warm,' like a fire that burned at the core of every living thing, and of course Haku had had no idea what he was talking about because his chakra chilled him to the core, coursing ice through his veins. Zabuza had stopped, looked at him strangely, and corrected himself, "No. You're different," and instead of with fear and disgust, it had been with an almost alien appreciation.

Haku had loved it then, and when he learned that it had been the very nature of his chakra that kept him alive when he should have died aboard the Daikokumaru, but those moments were very distant from times like this, when the constant ache of the cold kept him awake.

Temari, on the branch above him, made a grumbling noise in her throat and rolled off the side, dropping down on top of Haku. Haku caught her in a tangle of limbs, the air shoved forcefully out of his lungs. He clung to his branch with chakra as it bobbed dangerously, and Neji growled a little as the entire tree swayed, but the other boy was still mostly asleep and dropped back off quickly. Haku waited for Temari to move, but she only shuffled a little to sprawl on top of him more comfortably, her cloak settling to enshroud them both. "There. Go t'sleep," she ordered. She was warm and couldn't possibly be comfortable using him as a mattress, but Haku couldn't find the words to protest.

Haku blinked skyward. Gaara, a meter and a half above him, leaned over to give him a vaguely threatening but mostly blank stare.

Haku closed his eyes and drifted into an uneasy doze.

It felt as if he had not slept at all when he opened gritty eyes. The morning mist had never dissipated; now, in the evening, the impending night gave the training fields an eerie glow. To Haku, it was familiar and strange both, enough to send a warning thrill down his spine even as his mind settled into an easy confidence at finally returning home.

Temari eased herself up from her boneless sprawl, propelling herself backwards to lean against the trunk of their tree so Haku could sit up. "Sensei likes the mist, but being on the other side of it's a little unnerving," she observed. "I thought the fog usually clears when the sun goes up."

"Yes," Haku agreed cautiously. "But sometimes, especially in the winter, it'll stay all day." He glanced up automatically towards the sky, but was immediately distracted by the dark shapes of the rest of the Yorozoku children hanging in the branches like ripe persimmons.

Gaara lay half on his side, half on his stomach as his eyes flickered through the fog lazily. He had scarcely moved since Haku had fallen asleep, but rolled a small ball of sand in one hand absently. Wedged in the fork between his branch and the trunk of the tree, Hinata curled in on herself so tightly that she was completely engulfed by her cloak. Sai, heedless of the branches swaying gently under him with the wind, had one hand around the hilt of his tanto and his hood tucked low over his eyes.

"Let's figure out some food," decided Temari, drawing Haku's attention back to her "I'm sick to death of ration bars. There had to be something else - anything else. I could eat a shark."

Shark was actually quite good, but Haku refrained from commenting. "We can find the quartermaster for Zabuza-san's unit," he suggested. "If there is not a cooking rotation established yet, that would be our best bet for finding food."

"Okay," she said, then hesitated very briefly. "Otouto, keep watch," she said, to which Gaara's face twisted into a very slight scowl. "We'll be right back." She pushed off, landing on the ground far below in an easy crouch.

Haku let himself slip off the edge of his branch, dropping like a rock through the stagnant air before alighting at Temari's side.

All three teams of the refugee children had somehow become loosely attached to Zabuza's unit, but Haku had no idea how official their assignment was. Technically, they belonged to Shisui's Covert Intelligence Unit due to the necessity of concealing their identities, but like the Anbu attached to each unit, they were not supposed to identify themselves as such, even to other members of the same unit. The Yorozoku genin were a little too different to pass unnoticed - too young, too close to Zabuza and Shisui, too strange with their fur cloaks and Team Genbu's ever-present masks.

Haku and Temari, however, the eldest and most ordinary in appearance, managed to move among the clusters of Hana-ha camps with minimal interest roused in their passing, and the mist hanging over them all helped mask their chosen path. Haku sent his senses skimming out through the fog, guiding them away from the densest camps and towards the large tent in the back east corner of the Fifty-second Training Ground where Unit 15's quartermaster had set up shop.

"Is it weird, being back?" Temari asked, squinting through the mist as she padded over the grassy ground noiselessly. "Suna - I've been gone so long, I'm starting to forget bits of it."

"Surreal," Haku said honestly. "It feels strange to fight so hard against what I used to defend. But coming back to the inner village, at least, I feel like I never left."

"Hey! Kid!"

Haku turned to see Zabuza striding towards him. "Go ahead," he told Temari. "The quartermaster's tent is the one with the brown flag on top. I'll catch up with you."

"Don't take too long. The kids'll give us hell if they all wake up and we're gone," Temari said, and went with a swirl of her cloak.

Haku barely had a second to turn before Zabuza was upon him. His armour was still bloodstained high up on the pauldron, and almost neat slices bared off-white bandages beneath, but he still moved easily with a hunter's prowl.

"All right, kid," Zabuza said, eyeing him suspiciously. "This is the big one. No fuckups, got it?"

"Hai," said Haku reflexively. Zabuza grunted dismissively. Haku paused, in case Zabuza meant to go on, and when he didn't, ventured, "What are we doing?"

Zabuza glanced at him again, surprised. "Gonna go kill that bastard," he said, as if it should have been obvious. Perhaps it had been. "Yagura. Mei might try to kill Hatake and them afterwards," he added as an afterthought.

Haku blinked. "We will be preventing that from happening?" He had intended to say it as a statement, but his voice lilted up at the end of the sentence.

"Yeah," Zabuza said nonchalantly, and Haku relaxed a little. "You're on long range and lookout. Mostly lookout."

"Hai," Haku agreed. Mostly was just over half, plenty of leeway to inflict damage. "When do we leave?"

Zabuza squinted at the sky. "Sunup," he answered, a scowl darkening his face. "Gotta wait for a path to the Mizukage Tower to be cleared. Every other entrance to the catacombs is a one-way exit - you know that," he said, a hint of annoyance coloring his voice.

"Sorry," said Haku automatically. "I thought every exit was also a potential entrance, unless one is too lazy to try?"

Zabuza rolled his eyes. "Quit throwing my words back at me," he growled. "I told you that once, five years ago, so we could get into a buffet without paying."

"I always remember your lessons, Zabuza-san," said Haku seriously, blinking innocent eyes at him.

"I should trade you out for the princess," Zabuza threatened. "Gods know she wouldn't give me this much lip."

"She would probably give you more," Haku pointed out.

Zabuza glowered. "Fine, stay," he snapped. "See if I care when you get your ass blown up. Which is what will happen if you try to use one of those catacombs exits as an entrance."

"I will make note of that," said Haku, tucking his hands into his cloak. The damp of the mist added to the chill already lodged in his bones. He eyed Zabuza's armour critically, because he really needed to get that cleaned or preferably replaced.

"Hey, Z. Hey, Ichi-kun," said Shisui breezily, sauntering up with one hand in his pocket and the other holding a metal field ration bowl. His voice had a scratchy undertone, like he hadn't slept in days, but his back was straight. "Grab something to eat yet?" He raised the bowl to show them what appeared to be partially congealed stew.

"Ah," said Haku.

"The fuck is that?" Zabuza demanded. "Could be our last meal in this life and we gotta eat that crap?"

"Well," said Shisui, giving his bowl a regretful glance. "It was supposed to be some sort of pork thing. It's got a lot of fat and oil. It being cold kind of disguises that. I think it's actually better like this - you can pretend it's a fruit gelatin, but pork. And sludgey."

Zabuza gave him a deeply disgusted stare. "You know what?" he said. "I'm gonna requisition something from the quartermaster. There's no way I'm eating that shit."

"Rei-san is there right now," Haku volunteered. "We didn't know there was already food cooked."

"That's not food," Zabuza muttered.

"Great," Shisui said cheerfully. "Make enough for me 'n Itachi and the captain too, Z."

"Did I say I was cooking for you?" Zabuza snapped. "Eat grass, Konoha."

Shisui gave his food another mournful look. "You want to be the one to tell the captain he has to eat this?"

Haku winced delicately. Zabuza simmered. The captain would eat it without hesitation, like it was any other food he'd ever eaten, and sometimes it was physically painful to watch. He seemed to care less than Haku what he ate - and Haku had eaten out of dumpsters at several points in his life.

"Fine," growled Zabuza. "The brats can cook."

"Where're you going?" Shisui asked, as Zabuza turned abruptly on his heel and strode off. Haku trailed in his wake, and after a shrug Shisui followed them both.

"The quartermaster," Zabuza bit out.

Zabuza's Unit 15 quartermaster wore a scowl like a favorite shirt, pasted firmly on his face as Temari gestured impatiently at something Haku couldn't see. " - just need some - oh, here's the captain," said Temari, looking neither surprised nor impressed at their approach.

"Taichou," said the quartermaster grudgingly, straightening. His eyes lingered on Shisui's mask before he returned his attention to Zabuza.

Zabuza squinted at the man's face for a moment, an expression Haku had seen many times before. He was trying to remember the quartermaster's name. "Kawamoto," he said belatedly. "What's the problem?"

The quartermaster pointed at Temari. "This girl says she's part of our unit and is requesting rations, but I know I haven't seen her on the personnel roster. What was your code again?"

"Hana-Shi-000," said Temari in a tone that told Haku it wasn't the first or even fifth time she'd done so.

The quartermaster waved a demonstrative hand. "Zero-zero-zero?" he demanded. "There's no such code as Zero-zero-zero, sir, she's a spy."

"Did you check the roster sent out this morning?" Zabuza asked, deadpan. "She's on there."

Silence. Quartermaster Kawamoto had not.

"What'd she ask for?" Zabuza didn't wait for an answer. He turned to Temari. "What did you ask for?"

"Two kilos of rice, one and a half kilos of salted meat, and five portions of the spicy pickled radish," Temari recited.

Zabuza turned to the quartermaster. "Make that two and a half kilos of rice, two of salted meat, and eight portions of radish," he said in a voice that invited no argument.

Still, Kawamoto hesitated. "It's against protocol to give away food to unauthorized shinobi, sir," he said. "There's a cooking rotation for communal food - "

Zabuza leaned around to grab Shisui's yet unfinished bowl out of his hand. "This is what your authorized shinobi are doing to the rations," he said, thrusting it at Kawamoto, who physically recoiled after he got a glance at it. He took the bowl, very reluctantly, when Zabuza jabbed it at him more insistently. "That look _nutritious_ to you?"

"Oh," said the quartermaster under his breath.

"There's an assassination team going in after the Mizukage tomorrow," Zabuza growled. "Give the girl the rations."

"So," said Temari, trailing after Zabuza with the bag of rice in one hand and the pickled radish in the other. "Wasn't that kind of an abuse of authority?"

"Another is that Zabuza-san will have us cook for Juu-san, Itachi-san, and the captain as well, because Juu-san asked _him_ to do it," Haku offered, shifting the package of meat to get a better grip on it.

Temari rolled her eyes.

"Did I or did I not get your damn food?" Zabuza tossed over his shoulder. "You're welcome, princess. You better make something good with it."

"Sorry, Rei-chan," said Shisui cheerfully. "We're actually going to have to borrow Ichi too, for the planning session."

Temari's eyes narrowed. "'Going in after the Mizukage,'" she quoted. "Ichi's going?"

"Yes," Shisui answered. "I trust you to take care of the kids."

During and after went unsaid. Temari was not arrogant enough to suggest bringing all eight of the runaways. But she did frown and say, "Shichi and I - "

"Will protect the others," Shisui interrupted firmly. "If we don't make it back, you need to go to Shizune-sensei."

Temari's mouth tightened, but she said, "Hai. We'll see you in a bit for dinner, Sensei."

Haku waited until he had been shuffled into a smaller tent a little ways away from the Yorozoku tree to say, "Perhaps Shichi-kun would be an asset, given his defensive capabilities. His sand with my ice has a greater ability to counter Mei-san's lava and poison mist combination."

Shisui lit a seal with chakra, enveloping the tent in shroud of muffled silence, before saying, "We don't think it's a good idea to bring a jinchuuriki to fight a jinchuuriki when we don't want Terumi knowing that we have one, let alone two, who are both only ten years old."

"Ah," said Haku.

"We just need you to watch our backs," said Zabuza. "She won't try to kill 'em til Yagura's dead. Stay outta the fighting until then."

"Hai - " began Haku.

"Hang on, Z," interrupted Shisui. "Let's wait for Itachi and the captain and start from the top." He hooked his mask up on his forehead.

Zabuza shrugged. "Whatever," he said, and slouched over to the table. "C'mere, kid," he said. "You remember the layout of the catacombs? I can't draw for shit."

"Aa," said Haku, and followed him over. "But I'm afraid I don't recall the third or fourth floors entirely," he admitted. His first - and last - visit to the bottommost floors had ended prematurely when he bailed himself and Zabuza out rather quickly after Yagura had almost killed them.

"Couldn't just ask Terumi for a map?" Shisui asked.

"Doesn't exist," answered Zabuza. "You rank high enough to get in the catacombs, you're smart enough to remember how to get around without getting yourself killed. Mei'll not have bothered putting it down on paper."

"Convenient," Shisui muttered.

Zabuza smiled, unfriendly.

Haku wasn't as good an artist as Sai, but he traced the paths of the catacomb with surety. The first level held the Anbu headquarters, including those of the hunter-nin, with which he was very familiar. He labelled the chokepoints, the blast doors, the traps that could be activated in case of a siege.

The second level, under the first, had prisoner holding and the T&I Department. Zabuza had taken great pains to make sure Haku had never been sent there as a prisoner or test subject; he liked to tell stories of his own time there, but had not been sentenced there once since Haku's arrival. He'd protected Haku, though it should have been the other way around - the least of which was the careful distance he maintained. There was nothing more dangerous in Kiri than being someone else's weakness.

The third level consisted largely of buffer zones scattered with chokepoints, dead ends, and traps, as well as storage of highly restricted documents or objects. Haku had entered twice - once, to log a confidential report recovered from his target during his time as a hunter-nin, and the second to accompany Zabuza on his attempt on the Mizukage.

Each of the four levels was offset from the others by ninety degrees, like petals of a flower. The fourth protruded behind the Mizukage Tower, above which only held empty training grounds. Officially, it didn't exist; unofficially, it was the Mizukage's personal training space. Zabuza had deduced after their departure that it must be used to seal jinchuuriki - and, presumably, train them. On this fourth map, Haku hesitated.

"Well drawn," Itachi commented, looking over his shoulder.

Haku glanced up in time to see the captain follow him in. "Thank you."

The captain spared a moment to give Haku a nod in greeting. "Momochi, run us through this," he ordered without preamble. "Terumi sent word she expects to get the operation up and running in ten hours."

"This place is a shitshow of traps," said Zabuza, crossing his arms across his chest. "Even with a skeleton crew, it can hold off an invasion. Grab the first level map, Haku."

"Okay," said the captain, once Zabuza had finished detailing the many gory ways they could die before even making it to the Mizukage, and how to avoid said messy ends. "The success of this operation is critical for the Hanran - failure isn't an option, so Terumi won't be holding back her shinobi in reserve. Let her forces take on the higher levels and don't split up. This team is intended to assist with the assassination of the Mizukage only, so don't deviate from the target and keep your eyes on Terumi."

"She won't try anything until she's sure Yagura's dead," Zabuza offered.

"At that point, we'll be weakened, four levels underground, and boxed in by her shinobi," Shisui pointed out dryly.

"She'll be boxed in with us," the captain countered. "We can leverage her life for our freedom - and honoring the terms of the alliance."

Shisui snorted. "We shouldn't have to threaten her for that in the first place."

"I - " Itachi hesitated very briefly. "I may have a solution if it comes to battle between us. I need only meet her eyes."

Shisui and the captain exchanged glances. "Itachi," said Shisui. "You sure?"

Itachi tipped his head, his face blank. The captain rubbed at the mask along his jawline.

Zabuza said, "The fuck kind of crazy are you going to pull out of your doujutsu this time?"

"A genjutsu," said Itachi. "It is more powerful than any other in my arsenal, but I have not tested it in battle yet."

"Great," Zabuza muttered. "You got an ace in your back pocket but you don't know if it'll work."

"He subdued the Kyuubi's chakra," Shisui volunteered unexpectedly.

"What?" said Zabuza. "The fuck, when?"

"During the battle aboard the Jurojinmaru," Itachi said. "I used a higher form of the Sharingan when Naruto lost control of the Kyuubi."

"Itachi, Shisui - don't show your hands," the captain said sharply. "No Mangekyou genjutsu. Don't use anything that could tell Terumi you have any kind of control over a bijuu unless you're the last ones standing. Not unless you're sure there will be no witnesses."

Itachi and Shisui exchanged imperceptibly alarmed glances. "Taichou," Itachi said slowly. "What do you know of the Mangekyou?"

Mangekyou genjutsu. Mangekyou. _Kaleidoscope._ Haku rolled the word around his mouth carefully.

The captain paused. "That it's a curse," he answered grimly.

"Hey," Zabuza cut in impatiently. "Can we focus? You three can gossip about your mystical eye powers later."

"We'll talk later," the captain agreed, his eye on Itachi.

Shisui frowned, but let the subject drop. "So the plan is to fight," he said. "But to let Terumi do the lion's share without letting her know we're holding back. Z, any ideas for that?"

"She's never seen any of you fight, except Konoha, a bit," said Zabuza. "Thinks Hatake is some kind of hotshot, though. Sir," he added deliberately, just to watch the captain twitch. "Konoha, just pull your usual bullshit and tone down the shunshin barrage. Yagura's big on mid-range ninjutsu, and genjutsu's tough to get past him, so don't bother unless you gotta go all out anyways."

"That'll be the Sanbi's influence," the captain noted absently. "Anything else?"

"Yeah, I got a rundown of the jutsu he used on me," said Zabuza. "Haku?"

"His favored technique involves creating a mirror to make a clone of his assailants with equal strength that counters with the same attacks," Haku explained. "It's linked to his staff and doesn't require handseals."

"Sharingan knockoff," said Shisui dismissively.

"Fuck off your high horse," Zabuza snapped. "He makes a clone do it so he can two-time you."

"Will that work on a kekkei-genkai?" asked Itachi. "Terumi's youton mirrored would be devastating."

"It does," said Haku. "He was able to copy my Hissatsu Hyouso. No other opponent has been able to escape that attack." There had been no moment in that battle more unnerving than seeing his own certain-kill ice spears flying straight back at him.

"So no head-on attacks in view of the mirrors and no genjutsu," the captain summarized. "Anything else?"

"He favors suiton. Like Suiren Bakuhatsu no Jutsu," Haku said. "It's a wide-area attack where lilies made of water send petals flying into anyone in the area. I can block it," he offered.

"No," snapped Zabuza instantly. "Stay out of the battle unless Mei tries to backstab us."

"A good douton should do the job," the captain agreed.

"Other than that, it's just suiton, suiton, fuuton, and a douton thrown in for good measure," Zabuza drawled. "Oh, and a _fucking tailed beast cloak."_

Haku bit his lip. The other members of the team paused thoughtfully.

"That one might be a problem," Shisui admitted.

"Terumi should be able to pin him down," said Zabuza. "Rest of us probably just need to slow him down long enough for that to happen."

Itachi tilted his head. "Water prison technique?"

Zabuza grunted. "I don't know if I want to get that close to him. If I can get the drop on him, and if he doesn't burn it off into steam, maybe. Hatake can hit it with lightning but he'd fry me too."

"I don't think it'll hold him very long anyways," said Shisui. "Close range combat, but avoid facing him head on? Keep him from using ninjutsu."

"That should not be a problem until he transforms," said Itachi. "And after?"

"Hatake has his giant lightning wolf. Raijuu," said Zabuza. "That should keep him distracted."

Shisui made a noise of agreement, but the captain was quiet. "I don't know if I can do that."

"Why?" demanded Zabuza. "The 'trying to keep a low profile' thing?"

"No," said the captain, and hesitated again. "A raiton that big needs a lot of ambient electricity."

"What, performance issues? So we throw around a bunch of suiton and katon first, big deal," Zabuza growled. "Blade on blade, throw some sparks up, whatever."

"Don't you have something useful to throw at him, Z?" Shisui asked.

Zabuza crossed his arms. "I guess," he admitted. "The main sealing room has an underground spring in the back. I could make something of it."

"To summarize," said Itachi. "Engage in close combat and occupy his staff so he is unable to use his mirrors and attempt to immobilize him. After his transformation, keep a safe distance and utilize long-range, hard-hitting ninjutsu. Prioritize katon and suiton ninjutsu to allow for more destructive raiton."

"Good plan," Zabuza drawled, only half sarcastically.

"There is the matter of what happens after the battle has concluded," said Itachi, his eyebrows drawing together in a slight frown. "Of her best outcomes, this fight ends with the Mizukage dead and the Sanbi temporarily so before it regenerates elsewhere, or else with a new jinchuuriki sealed at the conclusion of the battle."

"Terumi clearly doesn't expect us to participate," the captain pointed out. "Stay out of it. At most, we find out who the new jinchuuriki will be."

"Think Terumi's got sealing specialists on hand?" Shisui asked dubiously. "Seems unwise to go after a jinchuuriki without one."

"At least one," Zabuza muttered. "You met her. Fukaya Maiko, Mei's commander. She's not great, but she knows the basics - she was on the retrieval team for Utakata for a bit."

Shisui raised an eyebrow. "Just a bit?"

"They told her to kill him to extract the Rokubi," said Zabuza. "She agreed, murdered her team once she was clear of Kirigakure, and defected."

"Ah," said Shisui. "What happened to Utakata?"

Zabuza shrugged. "Still frolicking out there somewhere. Mei's probably tried to get him to come in, but he's skittish. Doesn't really want to fight anyone anymore."

Haku had hoped, when he and Zabuza first fled Kiri with the Mizukage's hunters on their heels, that they would be done too - that without Yagura's hand on the back of their necks, that they could stop fighting, stop killing. But months on the run took their toll, and perhaps neither of them were meant for peace. There was no work for nuke-nin but shinobi work - the darkest, the dirtiest, that which the Hidden Villages deemed too filthy to sully their hands with. Zabuza took those missions, and where Zabuza went, Haku followed.

It was on one of those missions that Haku failed catastrophically and damned Zabuza to weeks of torture and a life debt.

"Any other concerns before we end this?" the captain asked, tapping a finger on the map absently. "We have a path of entry, a strategy to cover our exit, and a couple general tactics for the main battle, since we're going to have to play that by ear."

"That's pretty good for the most vaguely planned assault I've ever participated in," said Shisui optimistically. "Sounds fun."

"We done?" asked Zabuza impatiently.

"We're done," confirmed the captain, his visible eye slightly pinched. "Go eat."

Like the rest of Hanabi-ha, the Yorozoku genin cooked a lot of soups and stews because in wartime, the energy expenditure to make, say, handmade noodles, couldn't be spared. That being said, Temari's culinary expertise far surpassed that of whoever in the general troops was assigned to the cooking rotation. There were teams circling their claimed campsite like sharks, drawn in by the smell wafting off the large pot sitting on the cooking fire.

Zabuza stormed through and scattered them like fallen leaves. "Move," he snapped. "Get back to wherever your little hidey-holes are and mind your own business."

"What an effect he has on people," said Shisui, amused, crinkling his eye at Haku.

"Aa," Haku agreed wryly, trailing through the confused milling of Fifteen's shinobi that Zabuza left in his wake as Shisui sauntered at his side. Years of practice had made him all too familiar with Zabuza's peculiarities.

Haku saw Gaara first of the genin. He crouched in front of the cooking fire, shoulders hunched and one hand braced against the ground as he glared menacingly into the mist and the shinobi just beyond the perimeter from behind his mask. His other hand clenched and relaxed and clenched again.

Shisui dropped down in front of him and said cheerfully, "Hi there, Shichi-kun. Keeping a weather eye out, I see." Gaara perked up slightly, because that was the kind of effect Shisui had on people.

Haku moved past them to Temari, who presided over the cooking pot with a slightly frazzled air as she stirred its contents carefully. "Rei," Haku greeted. He paused, eyeing the frothing liquid. "May I ask who helped you with this?"

Temari huffed a laugh. "You can relax, it wasn't Roku," she said. "Shi did."

"I wasn't concerned about that," Haku lied. "Do you require any more assistance?"

"Yeah, can you just - " Temari twisted around, and Sasuke brushed past to dump a veritable bucket of mushrooms into the pot. "Could you check on the potatoes? It's Go and Hachi so I'm not too concerned, but Roku is trying to help them."

"Sure," Haku agreed, frowning at the pot. "Where did you find mushrooms?"

"Don't wanna know, don't ask," Sasuke muttered. He hovered next to Temari, staring into the pot critically. "Needs more pepper."

"Meh," said Temari. "Wish we had some basil."

Haku slipped past them both, to the base of the tree where Sakura, Sai, and Naruto huddled over a rough slab of wood, each with a kunai held with a different grip. "Roku-kun," said Haku. "I don't think that holding the knife backwards is a good idea."

"I keep telling him!" Sakura seethed. Her potato chunks were roughly the same size but not quite the same shape. Comparatively, Sai's were neat, even, and almost entirely identical. The less said about Naruto's, the better. Haku was just glad that they weren't covered in his own blood.

"Rei-san is about ready to add the potatoes," said Haku. "When - "

"No!" Sakura yelped, grabbing for another potato. "Not ready!"

"Take your time," said Haku, alarmed despite himself. Shinobi children were both more and less likely to cut themselves open with knives, and Haku had about as many scars as the next twelve-year-old.

"Ne, Ichi," said Naruto, thankfully setting down his kunai. "Are you really going with the captain and all the sensei to kill the Mizukage?"

Sakura flinched, her knife skittering across the surface of her tuber. Sai, didn't react, but Haku saw the way his eyes sharpened.

"I am," said Haku carefully. This strange assortment of children may have folded him in as one of them, but they were still children, and Haku was still a weapon first, so he didn't say, _I'm only a lookout,_ or, _we have to go through four levels of catacombs,_ or, _we think Mei-san will try to kill the captain and the other sensei once the Mizukage is dead._

Sakura bit her lip, eyes dropping down to Haku's midsection. He suppressed a flinch at the reminder and shook his head minutely.

Naruto, oblivious, burbled, "Are you gonna ambush him? Are you gonna hide and the shadows and then, boom! Surprise attack!"

"Perhaps," Haku said vaguely. "Your potatoes look done. Let me take those."

Sakura eyed him suspiciously but let Sai take the board and dump their chopped potatoes into a battered metal bowl that had followed them all the way from Tetsu no Kuni.

"Thank you," said Haku, taking the bowl from Sai.

Dinner was subdued. In perhaps the rarest occurrence of the entire time Haku had known the refugee children, the captain joined them for the meal, sitting crosslegged between Itachi and Zabuza. It had a strange finality - all of them, here, together, crammed into one tiny tent.

Team Byakko hadn't been anywhere near as exuberant as they had been before the Jurojinmaru, and tonight, even Naruto's forced cheer fell flat. Neji and Sai were all but silent, and Hinata's head ducked so low over her food that only the top of her head was visible. Gaara leaned into Temari, taking small bites of his food, but his silence was expected.

"You have a guard rotation set up?" asked Shisui, seemingly unaffected by the somber mood.

"Hai," Temari answered dutifully. "Shichi, of course, and four of us will do shifts per night."

"Good," said Shisui.

They lapsed back into silence.

"What will happen after?" Neji asked suddenly.

"If we don't come back," said Shisui, "find Shizune-sensei or Nara-taishou. They'll take care of arrangements for you."

Sakura and Sasuke exchanged blatantly suspicious looks. Temari and Sai traded likewise dubious glances.

"Of course you're gonna come back!" Naruto objected. "But, like, what do we do when the war's over?"

Shisui paused, tapping the ends of his chopsticks against his mouth. "We'll take a break," he said.

"We will need time to recover," Itachi agreed.

"Train?" Sasuke asked hopefully, and immediately ducked his head.

"Real training. Something fun," agreed Temari. "Not just - this."

Half a year of war had worn them all thin - Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura, who bore scars both visible and invisible, Gaara, Sai, and Hinata, who looked over their shoulders for enemies among allies, Temari and Neji, who dove into battle after battle at Zabuza's heels with fierce desperation because it was fight or be left behind. Haku's stomach ached constantly, the memory of that would-be mortal wound dogging his footsteps. The days dragged on him one by one by one, and he was tired.

Shisui squinted at them. "What you're saying is that you want to play," he said, the quirk at the corner of his mouth betraying his amusement. "Except with live weapons and jutsu."

Haku hid his own smile. "If that's what you must call it."

"You know what?" Zabuza said gruffly. "We make it out of this alive, you can have three days. Do whatever you want."

"Graffiti the Mizukage Tower!" Naruto chirped immediately.

"Set the Mizukage Tower on fire," Sasuke countered.

"Take the cool jutsu books out first," said Sakura, glaring at her teammates.

"Hm," said Shisui, somewhere on the border between unease and alarm.

"Knock yourselves out," said Zabuza with a shrug. "As long as you don't get caught."

"I want to see if I can blow away an entire lake," said Temari speculatively.

"I cannot see why I would spend the time doing anything other than training," Neji muttered, narrowing his eyes at Team Byakko's members. Sai nodded unconsciously in agreement.

"C-c-c-calligraphy?" Hinata suggested timidly. "A-and, um - "

"Kill people," Gaara supplied. Sakura fumbled her chopsticks.

"N-no!" Hinata whispered, her shoulders climbing up towards her ears as the rest of the genin turned to stare at them.

Temari glanced at Gaara askance, and he scowled.

"Killing anyone would be unwise, once the fighting has ended," said Itachi.

Gaara's glower darkened.

"Maybe one person," Zabuza bargained, a wicked glint in his eye. "He can have Michishio. Bastard has it coming."

"Michishio," Gaara repeated solemnly with a nod, appeased.

"No," said Shisui firmly.

"I, for one, will spend most of those three days asleep," Haku volunteered.

"You'll train," Zabuza threatened immediately.

"After those three days," Haku agreed.

"His lack of sleep will spontaneously catch up with him and erode his sense of control," Temari said very seriously. "He'll be forced to sleep or risk turning everyone else into ice block."

"Exactly," said Haku with a beatific smile.

Zabuza glared. "Who taught you two this bullshit? It's terrible. Stop."

"That's awesome," breathed Naruto. "I wanna be a snowman."

Zabuza rolled his eyes.

"Specialized training," the captain said suddenly. Hinata choked on her stew. Neji paused with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth and lowered them slowly. "We don't have time for that now. Afterwards, we'll teach you what you want to learn."

"And by 'we,' Taichou, you mean us minus you," Shisui said dryly.

"Yes," said the captain.

"Super cool super powerful jutsu!" Naruto said immediately.

Sasuke sighed deeply through his nose.

A chakra signature pulsed politely just outside. Haku twitched. Like meerkats, the other genin all straightened, their heads swivelling towards the tent flaps.

Shisui signed with one hand sharply as he rose. Sasuke hiked his rebreather back up, Naruto his bandages. Sai, Hinata, and Gaara each produced their masks from on top of his head, up her sleeve, and somewhere sandy respectively. Neji flicked his sunglasses down over his eyes.

Shisui slid his leopard-mask down and looked to the captain, who nodded. He strode to the entrance of the tent as the genin set their food down in a nearly soundless shuffle and Zabuza tossed his chopsticks down with an annoyed grunt.

Shisui swiped a chakra-laced finger through the silencing seal on the canvas wall, disrupting it, and drew back the tent flap. "Yes?" he said curtly to the shinobi waiting outside.

The shinobi straightened. "Sir," he said stiffly. "Message for Commander Hatake, sir."

Shisui's head tilted slightly. "You can give it to me."

"Sorry, sir," the shinobi hedged. "The message is for the commander, sir."

With no infliction, Shisui repeated, "Give it to me."

"Uh," said the shinobi. "Uh, no, sir."

Shisui leaned forward slightly to loom over the shinobi, though he was actually shorter than the other man. The messenger swallowed.

"That's fine," the captain said at last. "Stand down, Juu."

Shisui relaxed instantly. "Good nerve," he commented, and stepped back to let the shinobi in. "We really should let the captain Momochi try next time."

Zabuza huffed, but didn't speak.

The messenger edged into the tent, eyes skittering over the nine genin children huddled over their battered bowls of food, bouncing off the two teen captains watching him more closely than hawks did a mouse, plus Zabuza in all his aggressively threatening nonchalance, and landing on the captain. The captain looked at him. The messenger swallowed again. "Commander," he said. "Hana-Shi-3334, chuunin, sir."

The captain nodded. "Go ahead."

"Message from the other camp, sir," said the messenger. "From the leader, Terumi-san...sama."

"She ain't kage yet," Zabuza muttered.

"Terumi-san," the messenger corrected smoothly. He paused. "Suspense rubbish stripper bloody rain asylum sapphire kick paisley."

Silently, Naruto mouthed, _what?_

"Acknowledged," said the captain. "You can go."

Naruto, with the help of Sakura's hand over his mouth, waited until the messenger had departed and Shisui had reactivated the silence seal before demanding, "Suspense rubbish _stripper?_ What was that?"

"It's a code, idiot," Sasuke sighed, the breath hissing noisily through his respirator.

"Waiting is over, all out now," Shisui said. "It means it's time."

Zabuza frequently did things like bully members of his unit out of one of the few tents, in this case so he and Haku could prepare for the operation while the refugee children put the captain's tent back in order. Haku had long ago decided that of the list of Zabuza's habits to disapprove of, this was relatively low.

"Get your gear," Zabuza ordered as soon as the tent flap dropped behind him. "Drop the wildling furs. Back to the classics, yeah?"

"Hai," Haku agreed, folding up his Yorozoku cloak. Back to the classics: striped hakama, striped turtleneck. Faded sea-green haori, brown sash, platoon sandals. Each piece layered on top of the other methodically, the movements familiar and well-practiced. The traditional, bulky hunter-nin armour he skipped - instead, between the turtleneck and the hakama, he strapped on a much slimmer padded vest, to less hinder his movements.

When Zabuza brought Haku into Kiri for the first time, dressing for battle had been as much a ritual as sharpening his weapons. There was a rhythm to the movements, a specific order, and it settled his mind and brought it to bear on the battle ahead. Senbon holsters went on his forearms and along the sides of his ribs. He slipped the mask over his face last of all, and when he looked up, Zabuza was watching him.

"Ready, kid?" he said.

Haku's heart beat steady pulses of frost through his veins. He slung his pack with his discarded clothes back over his shoulder. "Ready," he said.

Zabuza ceded the tent back to the tokujo and her chuunin team with a jerk of his head as they strode out, to which the tokujo said, "Good luck, Taichou."

Zabuza's only acknowledgement was to yank down his battered Anbu mask - not his original one; again, probably stolen off a corpse before it became a corpse. Haku shadowed him on his right flank, taking two steps for each of Zabuza's strides.

Ahead of them, the captain emerged from the mist, turned to glance at them, and them turned again purposefully towards the town proper. His mask was that of a Konohan cat design, and had had for as long as Haku could remember a black scorch mark over one eye hole. Itachi and Shisui followed, one on each side as they cut through the fog. Shinobi scattered before their path, Guntai and Shirei-bu alike falling back to let them pass.

Zabuza lengthened his stride until he fell in at Itachi's shoulder and Haku at Shisui's. The adrenaline was burning an icy trail through Haku's veins, and each of his steps fell with purpose. His breath left soft white puffs in the air, vanishing almost immediately into the mist still blanketing the valley

Temari and Neji, nondescript without their own fur cloaks and bone masks, hovered beyond a cluster of genin. Haku paused in front of them as the rest of the assassination team continued onward, and Temari stepped forward to take his bag.

"You better hurry back," she ordered, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "You left us hanging at the southern dam."

"I did return for the assault on the Karikachi-touge," Haku pointed out.

"Injured," Neji countered.

"Practically a walking corpse," Temari agreed.

"Aren't we all walking corpses?" Haku asked delicately, unconsciously pressing his arm against his abdomen.

Temari and Neji exchanged glances. "Damnit," Temari muttered. "I'll let you have that one."

"Perhaps you could endeavor to return in better condition than you did the last time you departed with Sensei," Neji suggested, perfectly serious.

"Yeah, we'd really appreciate it," Temari said with an only slightly playful gravitas in her voice.

"I would prefer that as well," said Haku, meeting her eyes. She searched him, then quirked a smile. "Take care of yourselves, and the others," he added, glancing over to Neji as well. Neji gave him a silent nod.

"Knock 'em dead," said Temari, nudging his shoulder, and stepped back.

"That is the plan," Haku said, his smile hidden behind his mask.

He had to hurry to catch up to the rest of the team - they were all much taller than Haku, even Itachi, with much longer strides, and Haku looked like he was playing dress-up in a hunter-nin's mask. The shinobi gathered to watch the team's departure didn't part for him, and barely noticed his passing.

The crowd shifted just as Haku squeezed his way through, back to Shisui's shoulder as the rest of the team drew to a halt. The shinobi ahead of them parted to give a respectful space to Senju Tsunade herself, draped in a thick green cloak in lieu of her usual haori with the hood pulled down just above her eyes. She stepped forward to meet the captain, flanked on either side by Shizune and Commander Nara. For a moment, the tableau froze. The watching shinobi fell silent, barely breathing.

The captain moved first, bowing properly as a shinobi to his Kage, the kind of propriety that had been discarded as unnecessary in the early days of Hanabi-ha. Senju nodded in return, studying the captain with unfathomable eyes. "Go and return alive, Commander," she said. "As Konoha shinobi and as Hanabi-ha, make us proud."

"Hai," said the captain into the resounding silence. He bowed again.

The exchange lent an air of finality to their departure, even if their words said otherwise. Haku took a steadying breath, then another, the back of his neck prickling from the weight of the stares. The Hanabi-ha shinobi waited, still and watchful, as the team moved out.

Where the Hana-ha troops had been at rest but uneasy, the Hanran camps seethed in organized chaos as teams prepared for the coming assault. Clusters of shinobi rewrapped their katana hilts, oiled kunai, or strapped their armour on more securely. Others extinguished fires, packing up camps neatly before moving in teams to their respective companies and units.

Beniko met them at the edge of the unmarked border between the Hana-ha and Hanran camps. "This way, Commander, Captains," she said crisply, poised in the midst of the frenzy as a hunting cat stalking its prey. She almost vibrated with unreleased energy. "Mei-sama waits for your arrival."

Haku had not been in the catacombs for three years. When he first moved to Kirigakure, he had feared them as the place where many disappeared and returned damaged or not at all, as the hive of the best killers in the Village. When he joined the hunter-nin as a trainee, the fear faded to trepidation and familiarity. Now, on the opposite side of the battlefield, Haku felt unease slither down his back.

"Steady, kid," said Zabuza, low under his breath. Haku glanced up, but he was staring straight ahead, watching the second wave of Mei's shinobi advance into the catacombs.

Haku took a breath and let it settle his nerves, bit back the adrenaline sending sharp shocks through his system until it faded to a frosty thrum. He tucked his arms into his sleeves and brushed his fingers against the smooth surface of his senbon holsters.

"Leave the whelp, Zabuza, this isn't a training mission," muttered Ao, pinning Haku with a stern glare.

"Worry about your own team, Senzaki," the captain said sharply without turning around. Zabuza, his mouth opened to snarl a rejoinder at Ao, closed it again smugly.

Mei fixed Ao with a poisonous glare and said to the captain, "My apologies, Commander." Ao wilted.

Silence fell over the two teams once again. Where the Hana-ha team had five members, Mei's was more than twice their number - captains and jounin alike marked by the colored cloth tied around their biceps, seasoned shinobi who carried experience along with their weapons. Zabuza was the oldest member of their team by a couple months at twenty-four; Mei's youngest was twenty-year-old Kabocha Fuminshou, who had joined the hunter-nin corps at the same time as Haku.

Neither Itachi nor Shisui seemed intimidated by this fact. Shisui crouched, the line of his body relaxed but alert, and Itachi paid no attention at all to the anticipatory sakki curling off the Hanran shinobi.

Haku could not be a scared child, nervous and looking for reassurance before battle. He was a weapon, one of the best to pass through Kiri, and personally honed by Zabuza.

The world crystallized abruptly. There was the mission, there was the target, and there was Zabuza's safety.

He settled his chakra as Itachi rose and Ao signalled them forward with a jerk of his hand. The entrance of the catacombs loomed before them as the combined squad prowled forward, and swallowed them into its darkness.

Haku kept pace at Shisui's side. Members of the Hanran team bracketed the Hanabi-ha, and with the knowledge of Mei's intentions, the back of Haku's neck prickled. He reached for his chakra and it came easily, roiling just under his skin in readiness.

Splashes of blood, stray kunai, shuriken embedded in the walls - the detritus of battle marked the way paved by the shinobi that had gone before them. The only light came from the dim lanterns spaced evenly on the floors, amidst the scattered glass shards of the electric lights that would had been smashed before the invaders had even arrived.

The hallway twisted back on itself and narrowed. The first corpses lay strewn in the midst of the first chokepoint. The great blast doors were scorched, hanging half off their hinges, and they gaped forlornly to bare the fork in the hallway: one, to the barracks, equipment storage, and sparring rooms; the other to the offices, conference rooms, and hunter-nin division. Ao took the latter without a second's pause. Haku's eyes stuttered on the unassuming hallway that led to the hunter-nin quarters, lingering just a little longer before forging ahead.

The body count ratcheted up dramatically after they descended to the second level. Cracks spiderwebbed walls charred black by katon or explosive tags, with blood smeared on the stone or pooled around the unloving bodies littered on the floor. Puddles of water dotted the ground and an oppressive damp hung in the stagnant air.

Haku glanced down a hallway as they passed the entrance; the cell doors of the detention block hung open, and those too were splattered crimson.

Ao held a hand up, and Haku stopped abruptly, Shisui stilling at his side. "The advance teams missed a spot," he noted, turning to face the next hallway. Beniko slipped up to his side and the former Anbu Kyuuri fanning out opposite, drawing his katana from its sheath slowly.

A trio of figures in plain chuunin uniforms stepped out of the cell at the far end of the hallway. "Don't blame them," said the shinobi in the lead lightly, the henge melting away to reveal a shock of ice-blue hair. He grinned, baring sharpened teeth. "We're easy to miss." The rest of his team dropped their henge - one revealed slick black hair and a dark-steel katana in hand, the other a porcelain mask and a water whip already half-formed.

Mei swiveled to consider them. "Surrender, Kyabetsu, I won't ask twice," she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Always so righteous, Mei," said Kyabetsu, the smile dropping off his face. "Did you ever think about what your stunts did to the rest of us?"

"Change was inevitable," said Mei. "We're at Yagura's door. Will you change with us or fall with him?"

"Selfish bitch," breathed the hunter-nin, and Mei's eyes narrowed.

"Do none of you remember your oaths, your honor?" demanded Kyabetsu. "You're nothing more than savages without them, biting the hand that feeds you like a mad dog."

Zabuza snickered. "Careful," he rumbled. "Raijuu here doesn't like those kinds of comparisons."

"Honor won't stop our children murdering each other under the eyes of a madman," snapped Mei, her lip curling.

"Old news," dismissed Kyabetsu. "That's in the past. Yagura-sama wasn't the one who pit our shinobi against their own comrades. That was you, Mei."

"Who killed entire clans for daring to be born with a kekkei-genkai?" Mei demanded, sickly-sweet. "This war started with them."

Kyabetsu shook his head and turned away from Mei, searching the ranks of the team. "You'll see, Ao-taichou. Beniko-chan, little Haku-chan - I see you." Haku resisted the urge to stiffen. Zabuza, unimpressed, didn't move. "When she has the hat in her claws, you'll see. She is no different than any other monster here."

"Enough." Mei's voice cracked out like a whip. "Kyuuri, Michishio, Deitan, take care of this. Everyone else, move out."

"You'll see," Kyabetsu's mocking voice drifted down the hall after them even as Haku turned to follow the rest of the team. "You followed the monster here; you'll see."

On either side of the team, now, the walls rumbled with the markings of battle. The dull thuds of douton meeting their targets shook the ground under their feet, and flashes of chakra bloomed, raw enough to illuminate their path.

Haku tucked his hands a little more tightly up his sleeves, the better with to draw his senbon when the moment arrived. But each detention block they passed was empty of all but corpses and the distant chaos of a battle that seemed ever around the next corner until that corner was rounded. Without knowledge of the labyrinth of these levels, one could wander the tunnels for days without surfacing.

The stone rumbled beneath his feet; the flash of an explosive tag lit up the far hallway in brilliant white. The shockwave hit less than a second later, knocking Haku clear off his feet. He caught himself in a crouch, one hand glued to the floor with chakra to keep his balance. Fuminshou staggered back a step, one hand reaching for his back pouch.

"Ao," Mei barked, and her chakra burned the air around her.

"Senkibi, Oomugi, suppress," Ao ordered. "Left advance clear: kenjutsu. Untriggered tags on right. Hostiles penetrated defenses in center. Go."

Senkibi darted forward, the other captain close on her heels. The rest of the team waited, tense. Shisui reached up to the hilt of his tanto, running absent fingers over its leather wrapping. Itachi's stillness reached statuesque proportions. Zabuza's mouth curled up into an anticipatory smirk.

The two captains heralded their entrance into the battle with an almighty crash and a chorus of startled shouts. Chakra blazed, and a scattering of kunai and shuriken clattered into the wall. A small wave of water gushed around the corner, and a sudden silence descended.

Senkibi leaned her masked face back around the corner and said, "Clear."

Ao nodded confirmation. "Well, then," purred Mei, drawing herself up. "Shall we?"

Grim-faced shinobi with flak jackets torn or darkened by blood dragged or carried their fallen or wounded teammates to the side, making way for Mei and the rest of the team in the center. The floor was saturated with water from past suiton jutsu and littered with kunai. Part of the walls had caved, the ground cratered, and the stone bore the scars of katana blades and the stains of blood.

"Kabocha, assist with the traps," Maiko directed quietly, and Fuminshou slipped off to where Oomugi was examining the seals painted on the wall in blood. Maiko drifted away from her place at Mei's shoulder to meet a shinobi with a fresh bandage wrapped over the right side of his face. The rest of the team did not stop, so as Haku shadowed Shisui to the stairwell leading to the third level, he heard her order only, "Report."

A couple more fallen shinobi sprawled on the stairs, bodies twisted and still bleeding. Mei's head turned slightly as she passed one, her mouth tightening before she swept onwards without a word.

The stairs spilled into a long, low room, ending abruptly in a set of massive doors set into the rock. Half a dozen teams clustered at its frame; several held electric lanterns and a kunoichi had her eyes closed and one hand pressed flat against the door. Sensor.

Haku turned as movement flickered in the corner of his eye, his hand jumping to his senbon, but it was only Maiko, flanked by both Fuminshou and Oomugi. Fuminshou gave Haku a grim nod, which he returned, and hovered at his flank even when Maiko moved back up to Mei's shoulder.

"Fall back," said Mei imperiously, stepping forward as her troops parted before her. "Hold this point once we have crossed." The kunoichi at the very front slithered out of the way as Mei approached, melting back into the shadows at the side of the tunnel to give the assassination team room to advance.

With a breath and a surge of chakra, Mei inhaled air and exhaled lava that glowed bright and hot as it hit the double doors with a sizzle. Solid steel groaned and melted away like a heated iron through ice, burning a hole to the opposite side.

Immediately, a flurry of kunai hissed through the gap. Maiko dropped, slamming her hands into the ground with a low growl, and a douton wall reared up in time to take the blast from the exploding tags, a brilliant flash that lit up the darkened tunnels and sent white spots flickering in Haku's vision.

Mei spat another glob of molten rock just as Maiko's wall crumbled, eliciting an anguished scream as it connected with a shinobi on the other side. Mei stepped forward as soon as her lava had eaten away a large enough opening for her to do so, careless of the way the heel of her sandal smoked as it drew over the still-glowing lip. Ao followed close behind her, then Maiko and Makoto. The captain ducked in next.

"Weapons up," Shisui murmured next to him, flipping his tanto up and out of its holster as Zabuza stalked through, sakki curling off him as he swung Kubikiribocho off his back. "Ready, Haku-kun?"

Haku clenched his fingers around two handfuls of senbon. "Hai," he said, and stepped forward into the third level.

It opened into an atrium, empty but for two unfortunate corpses. Haku eyed them clinically: both under twenty years old, relatively new flak jackets, positioned close to the doors: cannon fodder, likely low caste. "They ran," Zabuza muttered, a sneer curling the corner of his mouth. The rest of Mei's team filed in cautiously, lanterns commandeered from the advance troops held high to survey their surroundings.

Three hallways yawned into darkness; all three, eventually, could lead to the one that opened to the fourth level. All three, however, had been rigged with traps and ambush sites since the founding of Kirigakure as a last defense against a siege.

"I think it's obvious we have to clear the level before we can fight the boss," Beniko murmured. "We can't afford to miss teams that can box us in."

"Agreed," said the captain pleasantly. "My team will take the far right. Where should we rendezvous?"

Mei's eyes narrowed. "Actually, Commander, you and Momochi can go with Ao, and Uchiha - "

"Not a chance," interrupted the captain, his voice gone cold and hard.

Maiko tensed. Ao scowled. Fuminshou's hand dropped to his back pouch again, all trace of amiability evaporated. Mei, unconcerned, said, "Surely you understand why I rather your team not run around unsupervised here, hmm?"

"Our backup is three levels above ground. You have bigger problems than worrying about us treasure hunting or looting whatever you think passes as valuable down here," Shisui countered. "The Mizukage, for one."

"My team stays together," said the captain firmly, his one visible eye steely beneath his mask.

Mei hesitated only half a second longer before acquiescing. "Fine," she said. "There's an antechamber just before the stairs down to the fourth level. Meet up there when you've finished sweeping your branch. Fukaya, Makoto, Kabocha, with me in the center. Satoimo, Oomugi, Senkibi, and Higata, with Ao on the left. Watch your backs and don't miss any traps."

A chorus of, "Hai," met her instructions, and with a sharp nod, Mei ordered, "Move out."

"Momochi, point," the captain directed as they prowled into the tunnel. "You know this place best. Uchiha, rear. Keep your senses alert; don't trust the other teams to have done their work."

"Hai," agreed Itachi, his voice low.

Zabuza shouldered his way into the lead. The halls were wide enough for him to swing Kubikiribocho freely, so he stalked forward with the flat of the sword resting on his shoulder. The captain went next, giving him enough margin to wield the massive blade in case of an ambush.

Haku stayed at Shisui's side, his hearing hyperaware of the drip of water from some pipe he couldn't see. Here, too, the electric lights had been shattered, but there was no lantern to see by - just the unending darkness, growing stronger the further they drew from the residual light of the atrium.

Zabuza was a master of sightless combat and had made sure Haku could fight just as well without his eyes, but surely the Konohan shinobi had never the reason to learn the same. He snuck a glance in Shisui's direction as the older shinobi tipped his mask briefly on top of his head to swipe the sweat from his face, only to meet an eye glowing bloody in the darkness. He swallowed a yelp.

"My hearing isn't as good as Z's or Taichou's," Shisui said apologetically, tugging his mask back down. "This way I can at least see chakra." Itachi looked over his shoulder, and his doujutsu too blazed crimson, tomoe revolving slowly around his pupils.

"Losers," grunted Zabuza from the head of the column.

"It must be nice," said the captain, dry as dust, "to be able to use your doujutsu to see in the dark without it sucking you dry in ten minutes."

"Uh huh," said Shisui. "Better go yell at Ni-kun and Kyuu-chan for being born with built-in night vision."

Zabuza froze midstep, throwing his free arm out. "Middling Uchiha, conjure a flame or something," he said. "Something's up."

"No, I got it," said Shisui, moving forward in a whisper of cloth. He snapped his fingers, igniting a tiny flame in the palm of his hand with a spark of chakra. The shadows jumped away, and the flickering light glinted off the razor-thin filaments crisscrossing the hallway ahead of them.

The captain and Itachi regarded the sight in silence. Zabuza hissed between his teeth. "You recognize this?" he muttered.

"Shokki," Haku responded automatically as Shisui swung around to look at him. "Middle caste clan known for traps and spider summons."

"Yeah," said Zabuza. "Good thing you two've got fire. Water just makes 'em angry. Plus, the little fuckers can swim."

"I," said Shisui slowly, "do not like spiders."

"Most people don't," growled Zabuza. "Suck it up, Konoha."

Shisui shuddered. "Rather not, thanks."

Itachi leaned a little closer to the first thread. "We can either set off the trap or avoid it entirely. Taichou?"

The captain rubbed a hand over the chin of his mask. "Momochi, best guess - what does this trigger?"

Zabuza squinted at the walls. "Could be anything. Regular exploding tags. Exploding tags plus poison gas bombs. Probably not shuriken or kunai barrage 'cause I don't see seals on the walls and those're better short range. Cave-in, maybe, fourth level pit full of something nasty, maybe. They're a fan of the basics. And also of seal-triggered suiton and douton. That'd be at the far end, so we can't see it coming."

The captain considered the trigger threads. "Go through the trap," he said. "Two, one, two. We'll set it off from the other side once we're all through."

"Sure, Taichou, of course, I'll take point with you," Shisui chirped. "Hey, between the two of us, we even have a good pair of eyes."

The captain might have rolled his eye, but it was too dark for Haku to tell for sure since the captain didn't succumb to obvious displays of emotion. "No. You go with Momochi; I'll take Haku. It's better to have one member who can use katon on each team."

"I can manage a little fucking fire, thanks," growled Zabuza. "Take Konoha. I got us."

"Fine," said the captain, and jerked his head at Shisui. "Lead the way."

Shisui stepped forward without hesitation, examining the wall closely before leaning his free hand against it. With one quick movement, he hopped over the first wire, letting his weight pull him low to the ground to duck the second. He took a step forward and crouched, bringing forward his hand with the flame to light the tunnel ahead of him. He considered, then stepped high over the next wire.

"Hold," the captain called, moving forward. Shisui stopped immediately, gaze trained on the darkness ahead as the captain approached the first wires.

With a handseal and a muted bloom of chakra, Itachi called up his own katon cradled in his gloved hand, and he held it up to the edge of the thread-trap.

The captain leapt, landing precisely where Shisui had, and slithering under the second wire. He hopped the third neatly, alighting squarely at Shisui's side. He paused, and for a moment, both of them scrutinized the next stretch. They turned to look at each other.

"Hey, Z?" Shisui glanced back over his shoulder. "Think they'd put down a weight-trigger trap?"

"Shit," Zabuza muttered, dragging a hand down the lower half of his mask. "Yeah. Yeah, they would."

The captain and Shisui exchanged another look. Shisui leaned over precariously to peer at the wall. "That looks okay," he muttered.

The captain hummed agreement. "Watch the ceiling," he said. "Weighed thread hanging straight down."

Shisui huffed. "Really going for the spider aesthetic, aren't they? Okay, I'm going." He reached over and up to the wall, sticking fast. With one hand still cupped around his katon, he levered himself up, painstakingly drawing the rest of his body to the wall until he could brace his feet across the wall. With glacial care, he maneuvered into a sideways crawl across the wall, and after a careful examination of his chosen landing site, lowered himself back down to the ground. "Almost there," he announced, tucking his chin against his flak jacket so his breath wouldn't disturb the air.

The captain joined him, his movements faster and more graceful with his four free limbs to Shisui's three. The final stretch proved startlingly uneventful. Both the captain and Shisui prowled the edges in search of hidden components, venturing several meters beyond.

"It looks clear," the captain reported. "Itachi, advance."

"Hai," responded Itachi. His movements flowed smoothly as he sprang over the first wire and crouched to avoid the second, though he, like Shisui had only one hand to work with. The shadows bobbed and flickered as he reoriented himself. The tomoe in his eyes swirlled thoughtfully as he considered the trap threads.

Haku thought he imagined the scuffling at first, but both the captain and Shisui whipped around to look. Itachi, clinging to the side of the tunnel under the hanging thread, froze.

"Oh, fuck," said Zabuza under his breath.

"Oh, shit," Shisui breathed, pressing flat against the tunnel wall. "Oh my gods, oh my fucking gods, holy shit!"

"Steady," the captain snapped, his eye on the advancing tide. "Itachi, hold your position. You too - "

"I think it's pretty fucking obvious we're blown, sir!" Shisui fired back, his mask swivelling to follow the advance of the spiders. Hundreds of tiny dark specks swarmed the floor, scuttling forward inexorably towards the team. Two members of the team on either side, one in the midst of the traps - Shisui was right; someone was observing their progress.

"Politeness doesn't work by cancelling out," the captain muttered under his breath. "Momochi, Haku, you're going to have to get over here fast; let the traps activate. Once Itachi moves, the trigger goes off anyways; you'll all have to go at the same time."

"Copy that. All right, kid," said Zabuza. "Think you're faster than an exploding tag?"

Haku's eyes flicked between Zabuza and the captain. "I can do it," he said, and drew on his chakra as he flickered through the familiar seals. _Hijutsu: Makyou Hyoushou._ A mirror formed before him, its twin between Shisui and the captain. Haku stepped forward fearlessly, let the frigid chill of the ice swallow him whole.

The mirrors birthed their own world, angular and reflective and distorted. He spun, and it was as if he moved in slow motion, watching his face reflect and refract on millions of little surfaces. The touch of the ice's chill sank down to Haku's bones. It was alien and it was home.

He reached back, back for Zabuza and the world outside, and plunged his arm out into the dimension beyond the ice. Zabuza took his offered arm and let him pull him into Haku's world.

"On my mark," called the captain, tension straining his voice.

Haku breathed, keeping his grip on Zabuza's arm. The icy air rushed up his nose as he inhaled, but instead of a sharp burn that the refugee children had complained of over the winter in San's forest, it sank easily into his lungs. "Ready," he murmured, as much to himself as anyone else.

"Mark!" the captain barked. Itachi blurred into a shunshin.

At the same time, Haku yanked in the cold and his chakra until it bulged at the edges of his control and then shoved it as hard as he could, sending himself and Zabuza hurtling across space in a fraction of the time it took to blink. Haku felt the give of every single one of the tripwires as they blasted past, and he and Zabuza slammed into the far mirror as the tunnel lit up in a brilliant explosion behind them. The ceiling of the tunnel crashed down, huge chunks of rock burying the hallway.

"Get me out and stay here!" Zabuza ordered, his voice echoing in the ice. Haku gritted his teeth and obeyed, propelling Zabuza from the mirror in a whirl of icy wind.

"Captain," said Shisui, almost vibrating in place, as he eyed the spider swarm, "We really need to clear those spiders. I might be about to do something inadvisable - "

Itachi inhaled, the chakra gathering around his chest ominously. The blaze lit up the tunnel even as it vanished around the corner. It left white imprints on Haku's vision, a series of small puffs as the summons vanished, and a trail of tiny charred corpses of the spiders too slow to avoid the flames. Itachi closed his mouth. "Threat neutralized," he said placidly as the tunnel faded back into darkness.

"With prejudice," Zabuza added, reluctantly impressed. "And - " He cut himself off abruptly as a shape exploded from the wall next to him, spraying shards of rock. Another figure ripped themself free of the floor in front of the captain, and a third sprinted forward in the wake of the smoke from Itachi's katon.

Zabuza leapt backwards, but the other shinobi darted inside his guard before he could bring Kubikiribocho to bear. Heart pounding, Haku palmed a handful of icy steel and hurled his trio of senbon from his mirror as Zabuza backpedaled again, but the attacker twisted, knocking them out of the air with a kunai before whirling on Zabuza again. Shisui intercepted in a flash, his tanto battering the kunai aside as he slammed into the shinobi. His katon extinguished, the tunnel plunged into darkness and Haku, ensconced in his mirror, caught only snapshots of the fight by the light of jutsu, the movement of Sharingan glowing in the dark, or the sparks flying off metal striking metal.

Itachi wove his way around his opponent's rapid assault. He batted aside the flat of the other shinobi's katana with the loud slap of the blade against a gloved hand, flowing just out of reach every time the man struck. His doujutsu revolved rapidly in the eyeholes of his mask as he swerved in and out of the way of his assailant's sword.

"Kai!" his opponent spat, his chakra billowing outwards as he took down each genjutsu as quickly as Itachi threw them up. "Kai. Kai!"

Lightning shrieked in the background as the captain pursued the shinobi flitting through the flickering shadows, and its eerie blue-white light cast harsh shadows on Shisui's and Zabuza's masks and the deep-set glare of their opponent. Zabuza swung Kubikiribocho with an audible snarl just as Shisui shoved the other shinobi hard and flipped backwards up onto the ceiling.

"Sheep!" the captain snapped above the clash of Zabuza's blade against the other shinobi's. "Home pasture!"

Itachi reacted instantly, drawing his own katana in a flash and bringing it crashing down on his opponent's blade with a ringing screech. His defensive approach reversed abruptly, and he surged forward in a low pounce that forced his opponent to bound backwards several paces or risk losing his leg below the knee.

Shisui spiralled down from the ceiling in a graceful arc, snapping, "Katon: Homuranagase!" and spat a burst of fireballs at the shinobi locking blades with Zabuza. Given the choice between letting himself be flambeed and beating a quick retreat, the shinobi chose the latter with a snarl on his face.

The captain flitted backwards, and the two teams faced off as the hallway plunged back into black.

Shisui's voice echoed in the darkness. "Three on four. Doesn't seem too smart."

"Everyone smart already bailed," Zabuza drawled. "Yagura's only got the dumbasses left."

Haku eased himself from the mirror, dragged himself back into the real world. The heat pressed in on him after the frigid chill of his ice, and he landed in a soft crouch at Shisui's back. He drew a single senbon carefully.

"You 'n me, kid," Zabuza said, almost silently.

"A cornered rat will bite the cat," the captain warned. "Light."

Itachi cast a katon that illuminated the tunnel, and the captain charged in the same heartbeat. Shisui sprang up onto the ceiling in a bound, fingers blurring through seals at lightning speed.

But there were only two shinobi crouched at the far end of the tunnel, not three, and the taller reared up to meet the captain's assault while the shorter slammed two hands into the ground. Stalagmites bulged out of the ceiling, and Shisui flipped out of the way, spitting a blast of lightning at him.

The air shifted; Haku whipped around, his senbon flying true. The shinobi, a curved katana in hand, twisted midway through his lunge, and the senbon sank into his cheek instead of his eye. Up close, Haku could make out the jagged scar cutting diagonally down his right forehead to his left jawline and recognized that face in a flash of memory - Zabuza had given him that scar.

"Moyashi," Zabuza snarled, recognition hitting him at the same time. "Persistent little bugger, aren't you?" Kubikiribocho sang as it hissed through the air, and Moyashi's face twisted in a harsh grimace as he ripped the senbon out of his face and dodged out of the way with just a hairsbreadth to spare.

Haku drew senbon like claws in one hand as Zabuza brought Kubikiribocho crashing down a second time. Around them, he formed handseals, but Zabuza barked, "Save your chakra, kid," and bore down on Moyashi. Haku frowned but aborted the jutsu obediently in favor of another trio of senbon.

Itachi ghosted forward behind Shisui's rush, beelining for the last shinobi. A plume of smoke exploded beneath the shinobi, heralding the arrival of a massive summons.

Shisui and Itachi both pulled up short and froze, blades angled in front of them uneasily. "All yours, Karasu-taichou," said Shisui quickly.

"I defer this battle to you, Juu-taichou," Itachi deflected politely.

Shisui paused. "I'm older than you."

"Surely that means you should be protecting me from this threat?" Itachi reasoned. The summons clacked its mouth pincers threateningly. Itachi's eyes followed it with great reluctance.

"Nope," said Shisui. "This is barely a threat to you; you have to do as I say. Fight the spider, kohai."

"I outranked you in Anbu," argued Itachi. "Logic follows that I can order you to fight the spider."

"I did, eventually, make captain. Like eight months ago," Shisui fired back. "You never even made it to jounin!"

The massive spider scuttled forward. Shisui and Itachi both circled around it warily, one on either side of it and its summoner, who drew a kunai in a backhanded grip and waited.

"Zabuza-san," said Haku, one eye on Shisui and Itachi, the other on Moyashi. "Perhaps I could...?"

"No," Zabuza grunted, batting aside Moyashi's katana and planting a kick full in the other shinobi's chest. Moyashi wheezed, hurling an underhanded kunai that Haku deflected with a timely senbon. "They can grow up and sort it out themselves."

"Captain outranks jounin, and I have been a captain longer," Itachi pointed out. "In that, I am your senior."

"That is so disrespectful," Shisui hissed. "Who personally tutored you in genjutsu?"

"Hey," the captain cut in sharply, neatly sidestepping his opponent's douton. It hit the far wall with a vicious crash, rattling the entire hallway. "Juu, take care of the summons. Karasu, take out Shokki."

Shisui's shoulders slumped. "Yes, sir."

"Hai," said Itachi smugly. He abandoned Shisui to the summons and stalked towards Shokki.

The spider blasted a projectile of sticky web that Shisui ducked out of the way of, and it instead impacted the wall, where it clung. "Oh gods," said Shisui, nausea wavering his voice. "This is so gross." He bounded out of the way of another, and then a third as he formed seals for a hasty katon. The spider scuttled backwards, out of the way of the reaching flames, and glared at Shisui with all eight of its eyes.

The unearthly screech and blue-white light of a raiton filled the air. The captain, a single crimson eye blazing in the hole of his mask, stabbed a lightning-coated hand through the opposing shinobi's chest. The man fell, a choked yelp forcing its way out of his throat.

Moyashi hissed, head jerking involuntarily at his teammate's cry. Haku took advantage of his distraction and hurled both handfuls of senbon one after the other. With barely a hiss to mark their passing, five connected to vital tenketsu peppering Moyashi's right arm; the last sank harmlessly into back muscle. It was enough. The shinobi's arm dropped abruptly, his blade with it as he went to block, and Zabuza beheaded him in a spray of blood that painted the stone.

"Good work, kid," he said, pleased, and despite himself and the decapitated body between them, Haku smiled.

Sokki fled. He threw up a douton that exploded against the wall and bolted down the hallway, splitting into three as he went. Itachi blurred after him, darker than the shadows around him.

Shisui scrambled backwards as the spider rushed at him, hurling kunai after kunai that the spider took in stride, absorbing the blades in its bulk. "Z, your sword!" he yelped.

Zabuza crossed his arms over his chest and glowered. "Hell no. Use that little pigsticker you're so proud of."

Shisui's voice went up an octave as he dodged between the spider's legs. "Z!" He hissed as the pincers caught his sleeve, ripping it through.

Zabuza rolled his eyes. "Ugh," he grumbled, and tossed Kubikiribocho in an easy arc. It revolved slowly, end over end.

Shisui snatched the sword out of the air with one hand and a growl and swung. It bit deep into the spider's abdomen, arresting its forward momentum and pinning it to the ground. Shisui ripped the blade free, staggering backwards from its weight, and Zabuza, long-suffering, stalked forward to relieve him of it. The spider spasmed violently, its legs scrabbling uselessly against the floor. For good measure, Shisui spat an enormous fireball and set it alight.

"Yep, that's dead," said Zabuza, setting Kubikiribocho back onto his shoulder. Haku knelt at Moyashi's body, pressing down clinically with one hand and sliding his senbon free with the other. He wiped each on the downed shinobi's sleeve, replaced them in his holsters, and rose to where Zabuza and Shisui were watching the spider burn.

The captain joined them, staring at the licking flames. His forearm from elbow to fingers was coated in blood, and more still splattered on his mask and armour. "No intel on what's ahead," he said, eyeing his own arm wearily. Red dripped onto the stone, viscous and sticky.

"Yeah, these guys aren't big on talking on a good day," Zabuza drawled. "Pretty sure they're not gonna be more chatty when they're dead."

"They didn't seem especially strong," Shisui noted. "But the spider thing was." He paused, visibly struggling for words. "Really disgusting."

"Yeah, well," said Zabuza. "They're Anbu but they're not really front line fighters. Espionage, assassinations, traps. Like I said - Yagura's scraping the bottom of the barrel now."

"Get their clothes; they're Kiri-made, they'll burn." said the captain, the glint of his doujutsu once again covered. "We're going to need more light from here on out." He glanced backwards, but the hallway had been buried by the traps and douton - not impenetrable, but certainly blocked.

"You should come with a warning, Taichou," said Shisui. "The minute you whip that Sharingan out, you should tell your opponents something like - " he affected a deep voice, "'No one lives to see this eye twice.'"

Zabuza snickered. The captain gave them both a longsuffering glance and said, "Let's go."

Itachi met them coming back, with the spider-bonfire throwing shadows from behind and the light of their makeshift torches flickering on their masks. His katana had been wiped, but the faint stain of blood remained on the blade. He sheathed it back over his shoulder as he approached.

The captain looked him up and down. "Status?"

"Confirmed kill," Itachi reported, and tipped his head further down the hallway. "The corpse is further down."

"Good," said the captain. "According to the map, we're halfway to the first major fork."

The third level catacombs twisted and doubled back on themselves twice as much T&I did. Instead of growing colder the deeper they went, the air grew hot and humid. The chill of Haku's chakra rose to the surface of his skin and faded to a comfortable temperature, but sweat was beading on Shisui's neck.

"Here," said Zabuza, raising his torch to the seemingly innocuous door set in the side of the tunnel. "Leads to the first set of vaults then back up the other side. Trapped to hell and back, obviously."

"The three of you, clear that," the captain ordered. "Juu and I will continue down the main hallway and wait at the next convergence point. Send a summons if you get in over your heads."

"Hai," agreed Itachi as Zabuza grunted, "Sure."

"Watch your backs," Shisui warned.

"I should be telling you that," Zabuza growled. "Do you have any idea how smug Mei'll be if one of you bites it and we show up with less than the full team?"

"That's at the top of the list of things I'm worried about," said the captain with no change in the inflection of his voice. He jerked his head at the door.

Zabuza stepped forward to open the door, crowding Haku out of the way as he pressed his hand against the reinforced wood and fed his chakra in. It opened with a faint click. Zabuza gave it a good kick, ducking to the side of the doorway immediately. Nothing happened. He leaned around cautiously, holding the torch up. "Kid?"

Haku inched forward cautiously, his eyes combing the dark for tripwires or seals rigged to explode. "Clear," he reported.

Zabuza peered into the darkness beyond. "Hey, human torch," he said. "You want this one?"

"Aa. I will take point," agreed Itachi, and ghosted past them both into the doorway.

"Catch you on the other side," said Shisui. "Taichou?"

"Go," said the captain, and the pair slipped down the tunnel. The bobbing, flickering light of their torch faded rapidly until just Haku and Zabuza remained in the faint circle of light cast by their own.

"Well?" Zabuza drawled. "In you get."

Haku ran comforting fingers over his senbon and entered.

Itachi's eyes glowed in greeting in the gloom. "One hallway, a set of stairs, and a path that doubles back on itself six times and diverges four times," he recited. "I am not aware of how much importance Yagura has placed on the information and artifacts stored here, but I doubt he would waste these catacombs as a method of whittling his opponents down. Keep your senses sharp, but allow myself and Zabuza to neutralize any threats."

"Hai," said Haku, smoothing down the wild edges of his chakra as it pushed up eagerly against the heat pressing against him. The stone was slick here, moisture beading on the walls and dripping from the ceiling in a constant, offbeat tattoo. Haku took two steps forward and realized, as the drops landed on his hair, his mask, his haori, that stepping silently would not be enough to hide their presence.

Zabuza grunted, annoyed. "This was much easier when we didn't have to slither through all the little hiding holes looking for rats." He hiked Kubikiribocho back up into its harness; the hall was too narrow to swing it effectively. When he stalked forwards his entire body was coiled, seemingly as much against the water dripping from above as the danger they represented.

Though their torch warded away only a few meters of darkness at a time, Haku didn't strain his eyes searching the edges of visibility. He accepted the limitations of his sight, listening instead for the patterns of the _drip-drip drop_ of the water drops interrupted by heads or shoulders as they passed under them, the plink of drops landing in puddles or on the stone floors. He let his hands out of his sleeves, turned his palms outward to feel the air currents against them.

"Stop," Itachi announced, holding up his hand.

Zabuza held the torch up higher because though he hated doing things for other people, he hated even more doing things other people asked him to do that he had no reasonable way to refuse. "Alarm seals, trap seals, chakra-shielding seals, what're we looking at?"

Itachi's mask tilted consideringly at the carvings in the wall. "All of the above," he answered after a long moment of consideration. "The alarm and chakra-shielding seals are easily disrupted. There is a smaller margin of error for the trap seals." He flipped a kunai up into his hand from its holster, and the chakra glowed around the blade as he stabbed quickly, one-two, into the center of two of the seals. They cracked, a hint of chakra tracing the patterns before fading away.

The last one, both he and Zabuza, and Haku craning around Itachi's shoulder as best he could, regarded warily. "Damn," said Zabuza. "That little squiggle's the trigger mechanism, right? Connected to a paired trigger."

"Connected to a trigger seal, yes, but I believe that particular component is the stabilizing matrix," Itachi said after deliberating.

"Damn," Zabuza muttered under his breath again. "Where's Hatake and his weird fucking skillset when you need him?" He paused. "Guessing if we stab the 'baku' kanji it'll explode."

"Most likely," Itachi agreed. "Perhaps disrupting the connections through the innermost spokes…?"

"Can't get 'em all at once," disagreed Zabuza. "Tag'll go off. We need to cut it off at the ignition sequence."

Itachi nodded once, and they both returned an intense scrutiny on the seal.

"Ah - " Haku said delicately. "Do you know what the ignition sequence looks like?"

Itachi and Zabuza exchanged glances and didn't answer. Zabuza, under his mask, was scowling.

"I may be able to identify it if it is identical to one I have seen before," Itachi offered.

Zabuza sighed.

"Ah," said Itachi, and lightning-fast, sank his kunai into a tiny portion in the top right corner of the seal that, to Haku's eyes, looked just as indecipherable as the rest. Haku flinched at the abruptness.

"Fuck!" snapped Zabuza, jerking back in alarm, and only relaxed when after five seconds, nothing had exploded. "A bit of warning, next time?"

Itachi watched the cracks spread through the seal, chunks of the stone crumbling to the ground. "This I was certain of," he said. "If my next attempt is less so, I will be sure to alert you."

Zabuza snorted. "Whatever, shortstack. Let's roll."

Itachi, though himself dwarfed by Zabuza, still had almost a head on Haku. His movements were not as obviously predatory as Zabuza's prowl - at first glance at his stride alone, one might mistake him as a civilian. But his steps were too controlled for that, his every movement carefully calculated and executed. His center of balance stayed stable and his eyes steady. He seemed perfectly comfortable in the dark. Haku, padding at his shoulder, felt as clumsy as a newborn calf in comparison.

The last time Haku had been in this level, he had been nearly incoherent with fear, anticipation, and overwhelming confidence in Zabuza's crusade to kill the Mizukage and bring Kirigakure into a new era of prosperity, one where neither of them would be reviled for the circumstances of their birth or the blood that ran in their veins. That failure had brought them back here once again. It beat with his heart and tugged at the edge of his thoughts, but this time, Haku knew, would be different.

This time, it was not simply him and Zabuza against the Mizukage. There was the captain, fierce in battle; there was Itachi, silent and deadly; there was Shisui, quick with a blade and faster with his wits.

There was Mei who wielded poison mist in one hand and lava in the other, Ao who stared at Zabuza with disdain but the loyalists with anger, Maiko who had never looked down her nose at him once - not here, not when they were all Kiri shinobi proper. They, Haku did not trust so much, not when Zabuza had raised the cry of dissent the first time and they had not answered, but Zabuza had taught him to know that one would follow that which benefited their survival most. Until the Yondaime fell, the Hanran benefited most from Zabuza staying alive.

A second set of seals carved above the archway before the entrance to the first vaults flickered faintly under the light of Zabuza's torch, and the three of them came to a halt before it. Zabuza glanced at Haku. "Hey, kid," he said. "You remember which ones are safe to take out right away?"

Haku's heart sank. He turned reluctantly examine the seals, but he could hardly make heads or tails of the intricate designs. "No, Zabuza-san," he admitted.

Zabuza didn't even look at him. "Me neither," he muttered, squinting at the carvings, and Haku let out a quiet breath he hadn't known he was holding. "See a 'baku' anywhere?"

"No, Zabuza-san," Haku said again after a pause. "Here's a 'suki,' though."

"'Kan,'" Itachi noted, examining the other side.

"'Sukima.' Crevice," Zabuza finished. "Pressure detection seal drops intruders through the floor, I bet."

"We need not disable this, then," Itachi said, stepping back to give the arch. "I believe it will be safer to avoid touching the ground until we are clear of its range."

Zabuza shrugged. "All right. Sure."

Their footsteps echoed against the stone wall as they walked, and the further they went, Haku sensed the room seem to unfurl before their path, the ceiling stretch up and up without ending. After the narrow tunnels and low clearance serving as a constant reminder just how far under the face of the earth they ventured, Haku could almost believe they were aboveground once again.

Zabuza dropped back onto the ground and lifted the torch, and the rows and rows of shelves cast yawning shadows in the narrow aisles. Haku followed him down and squinted into the darkness but could not see where the shelves ended. A bizarre assortment of objects either crated or freestanding, all labelled with tiny placards, piled high on those shelves. On the closest, Haku spotted an open-top box full of plastic water canteens, the kind civilian athletes favored. Beside it sat a large rack of battle kama of different shapes and sizes, but all with a familiar wicked curved blade.

"This is what Kiri hides away as precious?" Itachi's voice was neutral as ever, but Haku thought he heard a hint of skepticism.

"Yeah, no idea," Zabuza grunted. "Let's go. Don't touch anything; pretty sure there's something rigged to take your hand off if you take something without the right procedure."

"Aa," Itachi said, eyeing something on the far end of the room. "I will resist the urge to steal...cans of paint."

"You do that," Zabuza agreed, taking the lead down the center aisle. "It's gonna be tough, but try not to fall for the handpainted hairbrushes over there. You too, Haku," he added. "No socket wrenches for you."

"I'm not sure I'll survive the deprivation," said Haku blankly, but his gaze drew to the collection of hairpins they passed - in particular, a single hairpin adorned with a tiny metal phoenix. But Zabuza had no use for a Haku who liked pretty things.

Just as gradually as it opened up, the vault tapered to a bottleneck until they passed once more into a hallway as identical as any other they had already traversed. Haku turned his hands out again, let the sticky-damp air sift past his palms and through his fingers.

The air shifted, the flow truncating as it hit his hands. Haku opened eyes he hadn't realized he'd closed and watched the dead end fade into view as they approached. On either side was a wooden door set into a stone doorway, each with an iron ring instead of a doorknob.

Itachi gave each door a searching look. "I will take the right and return once it is clear," he said.

"Cool," said Zabuza. "Left one should have the way out. Yell if there's something you can't handle."

"I will not," said Itachi with dignity, and pushed the door open. It clicked shut behind him, swallowing him into the darkness.

"What do you sense, kid?" Zabuza's voice echoed for all that it was barely louder than a mutter.

Haku inhaled, breathing in the damp. A second, deeper breath carried hints of oil, more still of salt. He crouched to examine the floor more closely and watched the way the water pooled around them, comparing it in his mind to the drip-drip of the water from the ceiling and down the walls.

He tilted his head, considering. "Three, maybe four shinobi passed through twenty to thirty minutes ago," he decided. "Enough time for the water flow to return to normal, but not enough to disperse the scent in stagnant air."

Zabuza grunted assent. "Where'd they come from and where'd they go?"

Haku glanced at the door Itachi had gone through and inched closer to the door opposite. "Zabuza-san, may I - ah, thank you," he said when Zabuza brought the torch closer to the iron ring set in the wood. "They came from the main hallway and entered this door."

Zabuza lifted the torch zway again, and Haku stood, apprehensive despite himself. "Good," Zabuza rumbled, and Haku quashed his surge of pride.

"Three went through that door," Zabuza said offhandedly. "The fourth went through the other door hours ago, but that's Uchiha's problem now."

Haku jerked, a frisson of fear spiking down his spine. "Should - would it not have been wise to tell him before he went?" Haku asked, alarmed.

Zabuza sniffed. "Probably," he said. "Pretty sure he'll be fine, though."

Haku took a steadying breath. There was nothing to do but wait.

Itachi's chakra was muted but not hidden. Haku straightened as it appeared faintly at the edge of his awareness, and the door opened at last. Itachi stepped out, his hands empty and his armour as clean as when he had entered.

Zabuza gave Itachi an up and down glance and said, "What's with you? Someone give you trouble?"

"No," Itachi answered, a fraction of a second too slow. He shut the door behind him with a decisive thunk.

"You've got your swirly eyes on," Zabuza observed sharply. "Thought Hatake told you to keep 'em locked down."

Itachi blinked, and slowly the scything blades of his eyes swirled apart, back into individual tomoe. "I handled it," he said. "This area is clear. Are you prepared to continue?"

Zabuza paused. "Yeah, he said. "We're good to go."

Itachi jerked his head at the opposite wall and said, "Proceed."

Haku expected Zabuza to glare, to give Itachi a suspicious stare, or at least to prod him a little further, but instead he turned without comment. "On me, kid, and keep your senses sharp. Three potential hostiles."

Three potential hostiles became three confirmed hostiles and a silent, desperate battle in the vaults that housed ninjutsu scrolls older than the Warring Clans Era. Haku walked away with five bloodied senbon, a gash across his left bicep, and Zabuza's ire.

"I told you to save your chakra," Zabuza snarled.

"I apologize," said Haku meekly. He didn't regret it. The trajectory of the enemy's shoto would have severed or at least nicked one of the major tendons in Zabuza's shoulder. Instead, it glanced off the mirror Haku threw up on pure instinct.

Zabuza glowered. "Wrap that up," he snapped. "We have a rendezvous to meet." He stormed off to the corner of the room to glare at the shadows, ignoring the corpses sprawled haphazardly on the floor. Zabuza had known all three of them; his temper was blacker and his tone sharper for it.

The cut on Haku's arm wasn't deep, but his very blood around the wound itched. It pulled when he reached for the roll of bandages in his back pouch and when he tugged his sleeve up gently to reach the cut. In the flickering of the flame, it looked normal enough, but when he sniffed it, he could just about make out a bitter tang.

Itachi, who had entered the fight with a cold and distant efficiency, glanced over clinically. "Poison?" Haku winced. The irritated cloud hanging over Zabuza's shoulders darkened.

"Yes," Haku admitted around the end of the bandage between his teeth. "Eel blood on the blade, if I'm not mistaken. The exposure was minimal. It should not affect my combat performance."

Itachi nodded, and turned his sharp stare back to the shadows. Zabuza glared a little harder at the wall. Haku tied off the bandage with a neat knot and pulled his sleeve back down.

The icy silence persisted down the twisting corridors. Zabuza's sakki rose and ebbed. Had there been other shinobi lying in wait, they would have been alerted to the team's advance, but Zabuza didn't care. It was a dare. Haku had seen this mood before - Zabuza craved a fight.

Itachi normally tolerated no factors that might jeopardize a mission, and as such had no compunctions against commenting or even ordering Zabuza to keep it suppressed. But he didn't. He walked ahead of them at the point position, perfectly controlled, and completely ignored Zabuza's fluctuating killing intent. Every subsequent seal array was avoided or dismantled in one-word communications.

The final door was nondescript, worn and weathered wood bound with iron. Shisui and the captain's chakra signatures, muted but steady, hovered just beyond. Haku breathed silent relief to see them.

"Took you quite a while," Shisui noted lightly as the door opened and Zabuza stormed out. "Sit down. You'll need a break before we move on."

Itachi moved to his cousin's side, sinking to the ground gracefully. Zabuza did not. "Fuck that," Zabuza snarled. "Let's just gank that little fucker so we can get out of this shithole." His irritation had festered during the hike, and Haku saw the bits of his temper boiling over.

"Sit," the captain ordered, his voice low but hard.

Haku heard nothing but the beat of his heart in the absolute silence that followed.

Zabuza's killing intent twitched. Very slowly, he sat.

The captain nodded slightly and handed him three ration bars. "This is the last break we'll get before meeting Terumi's teams," he said. "Eat. Drink. You need to sleep, you have twenty minutes. Haku?"

Haku jerked, automatically taking the ration bar the captain passed over. "Thank you," he said.

"Get some rest," the captain said.

"Run into anyone?" Shisui asked. "We ran into some weird jounin who straight up gave up the second they saw us. And another two squads that didn't."

Zabuza took a vicious chomp out of his ration bar.

"Four hostiles encountered," Itachi reported mechanically. "Threat neutralized."

"That's not what I asked," Shisui said, shoving his shoulder into Itachi's. "You're really on edge for someone who neutralized the threat. The bodies that drop are behind you, cousin."

"Codenames in the field," Itachi said, but his shoulders slumped just the slightest when Shisui turned to look at him sharply.

Shisui, as he was wont, let it slide without further comment. "Okay, hey," he said. "What's the weirdest thing you saw here under lock and key? Because we found literally a wall to wall shelving unit full of skulls. Not just human skulls, but even mouse or lizard or deer skulls."

"A crate of fake jewel dragonfly hairpins," Haku volunteered.

"Paint," said Itachi at last. "One thousand and eighty-seven two-liter cans of sage green paint."

"That's - " Shisui paused. " - oddly specific. Hey, Z, what's one thousand and eighty-seven two-liter cans of sage green paint doing in the third level catacomb vaults?"

"Probably poisoned," Zabuza grunted. "Sell some paint to some other village, slowly poison their shinobi and civilians."

"Wow," said Shisui. "That's devious. And oddly domestic. World domination by particularly tasteful interior design."

"Soothing color," the captain commented.

Zabuza shoved the rest of his ration bar in his mouth. "That's the idea."

Perhaps that was a curious or inane topic to discuss on the brink of the most dangerous battle of their lives, but Haku could see Itachi's distant, focused intensity lose its edge, Zabuza's tightly-wound tension and temper loosen into readiness and not just belligerence. The captain had one arm resting on his propped up knee, watching the rest of the team with one hooded eye beneath the porcelain mask. It felt comfortable. It felt right.

Kilometers underground, deep in once-home now-enemy territory, Haku leaned back against the slick stone of the cave wall and let his eyes drift closed.

The gentle pulse of chakra next to him woke Haku more effectively than the hand on his shoulder. "On your feet, Ichi-kun," Shisui prompted in a murmur, and Haku's consciousness came swimming back through the murkiness of sleep.

Haku struggled upright, distantly mourning the loss of coordination before it returned all at once and turned his ungainly flailing into a smooth rise. Zabuza already stood at the edge of their torchlight, the flames glinting off Kubikiribocho's blade, and Itachi was a barely-noticeable shadow at his side. Haku felt a momentary pang of panic and guilt - he was the last one up, probably the only one to sleep, and they were all waiting for him. "How long was I asleep?" he rasped.

"Two hours," said Shisui blithely. Haku jerked, adrenaline sluicing through his veins and jolting him the rest of the way to full wakefulness. "Don't worry," Shisui reassured. "We hunkered down here a couple extra hours. Terumi's B-team's running behind."

"Weapons checks," said the captain. "We're a go for the assault immediately after we regroup with Terumi; we won't have time to take another break."

Haku ran his fingers along the holsters strapped along his arms, hidden under his sleeves. He could feel the press of the weapons pouch at the small of his back, the weight of the senbon sewn into the hems of his haori, the comforting surface of the bone-knife from San bound to his ankle.

Shisui patted down his kunai holster absently, sheathing his tanto back into its sheath strapped across his back. "I'm good, Taichou."

Itachi weighed the katana in his hands for a thoughtful moment before he said, "Ready."

Zabuza grunted, Kubikiribocho dangling loosely from one hand. "Been ready. Kid?"

"Hai," said Haku. "I'm ready."

"Good," said the captain. "Let's go."

The final hallway sloped gently to the antechamber preceding the stairs down to the fourth and final level of the catacombs. Worn seals lined the wall, but someone had dragged a blade through them all, and cracks spiderwebbed the surface. But like the seal, the newest cracks' sharp edges had softened with time; these had been damaged long ago and never repaired. A metal ring high on the wall sat empty, and Zabuza reached up to set the torch there.

Zabuza swivelled to eye the rest of the room. "First ones here," he noted. "Think we got the easy one?"

"Maybe that's why Terumi didn't want us taking this route," suggested Shisui.

"She was more concerned that this team stayed together and unsupervised," Itachi pointed out.

The captain ignored them all, prowling on light feet around the edges of the room before circling back around to the rest of the group. "Clear, or as much as it can be," he said. "Standby."

Shisui sank down onto his haunches, letting his legs sprawl out in front of him and leaning back against the wall. "Hey, Z," he said. "We've been underground for eighteen hours. You came all the way down here to try and kill the Mizukage? Why didn't you just give it a go when he was in his office or something?"

"He's got guards up there," growled Zabuza, remaining planted firmly on his feet with his arms crossed over his chest. "Easy to call for backup, and an entire village to back him up. I knew he did private training sessions down here, and that he left his guards behind for that. Just didn't know it was 'cause he's a jinchuuriki."

"Ah," said Shisui. "That does tend to throw a wrench in one's assassination plans."

Haku crouched hesitantly next to Shisui, who nodded companionably in his direction. On the other side of the group, the captain and Itachi stared intently at each other and communicated entirely with their eyes and truncated hand signals.

"Haku," said the captain, turning to him abruptly, and Haku jolted. "How are you?"

Haku blinked, his mind momentarily stalling. "Well?" he tried.

The captain paused. "How are you feeling? How are your chakra levels?" he amended. "You slept a little earlier."

"Oh," said Haku, grateful for the mask hiding his blush. "Yes, I - my chakra is - " he hesitated just a split second, enough time for Zabuza to lever a warning glare in his direction. "It's not completely replenished," he admitted. "I am still not entirely recovered from my...last major injury. My mobility is impaired as well." The memory of the hot burn of steel through his abdomen flashed through his mind, but he fought to keep his breath from stuttering. Zabuza glowered a little harder.

The captain watched him with one dark eye glinting in the torchlight. "Your safety comes before this mission," he said quietly. "Stay out of the fight, and if anyone comes after you, get out - out of the level, out of the catacombs, whatever it takes."

"What about Mei-san, and after…?" Haku ventured.

"We don't know that will actually happen," said the captain.

"We can handle ourselves, kid," interjected Zabuza. "You're no use if you get yourself smashed into a pulp by Yagura."

"We'll be fine," Shisui added. "It'd make life easier if you were there, but you know, we'll live."

"Aa," agreed Haku, and resolved to be there at the end of the battle. "I understand."

"Haku!" Zabuza barked, because he knew Haku too well.

"Zabuza-san?" Haku answered politely.

"If you die," Zabuza threatened. "I'll fucking kill you. Someone comes after you, you run. Got it?"

"Hai," said Haku, and amended his resolution to retreating if necessary and then returning to fulfill his duty. Zabuza's glare darkened.

"Incoming," reported Itachi, forestalling any further efforts by Zabuza to corner Haku into a situation he couldn't maneuver his way out of.

Haku shot to his feet, and Shisui followed more slowly, stretching languidly to loosen his muscles.

The captain took a deep breath. "Terumi's team," he said. "One mild injury. Burn."

Zabuza sauntered back around, seemingly casual, and Itachi closed the gap so the five of them were arrayed in a loose formation, one from which it would be both easy to attack and easy to defend. They waited.

"Good nose, Commander," commented Maiko, stepping out of the darkness of the middlemost hallway.

"Good ear, Commander," responded the captain politely.

Mei swept around the corner, the cobalt hue of her battle-dress as pristine as when they had last seen her. Makoto and Fuminshou flanked her on either side, the former with a bandage wrapped from forearm to palm. "Good, you're here," she said briskly. "Your team's status?"

"No major injuries, weapons check complete," said the captain. "Ready to move."

"Glad to hear it," said Mei.

Zabuza crossed his arms. "Where the fuck's the old man?"

Mei cut a sharp glance over. "Ao's team ended up with the somewhat more difficult route. They ran into trouble, but they're on their way now."

Zabuza rolled his eyes. "Taking his time like - " A barrage of kunai hissed from the darkness, cutting him off.

The captain, closest to the door, took the brunt of the damage. He whirled, but wasn't fast enough to dodge the spray of kunai. One caught him in the throat and he collapsed to his knees, choking as the strength left his legs.

Itachi's reaction was immediate and brutal. He spat a fireball that blazed white in the darkness of the cavern, but Yagura twisted out of the way and planted his feet once again, a clone splitting off to stand at his side.

"You've caused a lot of trouble," they said in unison. Yagura's voice, as ever, was deceptively gentle. "Mei. Won't you stop this?"

Mei, chakra rising in waves as it coalesced around her hand, stepped forward. "No more talking," she purred, but venom dripped from her voice. "We've talked enough; it's nothing but the same hot air, over and over and over. There will be no end to the Bloody Mist until you are dead."

"I'm sorry you feel that way," Yagura said regretfully, his brow furrowed just the slightest between his eyes.

"He doesn't seem insane," noted Shisui as an aside, but his voice was icy rather than playful.

"That's why we _call_ him the 'mad kage,'" Zabuza said grimly. "So we don't forget the messed up shit he's done."

Zabuza and Haku had both done some rather morally ambiguous things in the past, but at least neither of them had presided over the forced enlistment and deaths of over fifty percent of their Academy students or the annihilation of entire clans. Yagura had learned at the knee of the Sandaime Mizukage, for whom the crowning jewel of his career was the sack of Uzushio and massacre of its entire shinobi force.

"You keep interesting company these days. The prize is Kiri, yet I see we have some nuke-nin with us," Yagura mused, nudging the captain's body with his foot. With a soft puff, the captain's clone dissipated.

A hand exploded out of the ground and snapped around Yagura's ankle, dragging him down into the stone. The captain pounced out of the ground, lightning wreathing his hand as he slammed a kunai into Yagura's exposed head. That clone too popped with a cloud of white smoke, but hidden in that smoke a volley of kunai hissed out.

"When the fuck did you have time to make a kage bunshin?" Zabuza demanded, prowling around to get behind Yagura.

"Oh, you know," the captain said vaguely, leaning back to avoid a kunai that went hurtling centimeters from his face.

"This one's a clone too," said Mei, her words clipped. "Bastard sent them to size us up."

"It's good to see you all," said the Yagura-clone, swinging his staff up. "Surrender, please. There is no need for more waste." He turned slightly towards Itachi, tilting his head inquisitively. "A Hatake and an Uchiha? And Yukihyou, I don't believe you're one of mine either, are you?"

"None of us are yours," said Maiko coldly.

"Give it up, Yagura-sama," said Mei. "Your Kiri has fallen, your shinobi no longer stand with you. It's over."

"They will fall into line again once I have taken care of you," Yagura promised, and jerked his staff up to deflect the trio of senbon Fuminshou sent flying. "Their disloyalty will be punished, and Kirigakure will be stronger for it." He turned towards the Konohan shinobi. "You - if you are looking for a village, all I ask is that you turn back now. You will have a place with me once this battle is over."

"Trying to recruit Kage-Killer Kakashi?" Mei purred, but the chakra at her fist roiled turbulently. "Desperate, are you? Not afraid he'll add another to his tally?"

"I'm flattered, both of you," said the captain, shifting his crouch into a more comfortable pose. "But, Terumi-san - I wouldn't say that's a nickname I'm fond of, and Yagura-sama, you did just try to kill me."

"It was not a sincere effort. You need only stand aside," Yagura entreated, lowering his staff. "This isn't your fight, but it can still be your home."

Mei's temper and chakra both reached its boiling point. "Enough!" She spat a wave of lava, her battle-dress snapping around her heels.

Yagura flipped up onto the ceiling, out of the way, landing in an easy crouch. "Think about it," said Yagura softly. "Enough blood has been spilled already."

Maiko's sword bisected his head a second later as the commander blurred forward in a vicious attack, and the clone dissolved into smoke. "I've enough of your lies," she said, low and velvety. She landed firmly on both feet, her sword swept out at her side. "Let's end this."

"Let's," Mei agreed in a low growl, striding for the stairs.

"We're missing the final team, still," the captain said, rising to his feet, not quite in Mei's path but not following her either. "There is no element of surprise. Wait."

Mei tossed a sharp glance over her shoulder. "I know you're not telling me what to do," she said lightly, belying the steel in her voice.

"No," agreed the captain. "But my team will not move forward until every effort to succeed has been made, and now, that includes waiting for the third team." Mei's eyes narrowed into a glare, but the captain didn't so much as flinch. "Go, if you like," he said, "but it won't be with us."

A short pause. Mei's glare turned into a speculative up-and-down. "I suppose a break wouldn't hurt," she decided at last.

In the shadows behind the captain, Makoto relaxed out of a crouch, letting his hand drop from his blade. Shisui turned his hunter's stillness into an easy stance.

"Damn," muttered Zabuza under his breath wistfully. "Now that's a fight I wanna see."

In the temporary detente, Fuminshou padded over to where Haku stood at the corner of the room, settling next to him with his hands tucked around his bracers. "Good hunting?"

"Aa," Haku agreed, watching as Shisui ambled over to Maiko, gesturing to her katana and asking her something in a low murmur too soft for Haku to hear. Maiko held out the blade for his inspection, her guarded posture opening to his friendly overtures. "Yondaime-sama does not have many loyal shinobi left."

"No," said Fuminshou. "You haven't been in Kiri recently," he said, and though there was no accusation in his voice, Haku felt a fist twisting in his throat. "The more he lost, the more Mizukage-sama punished. There are very few now who don't have scars from his anger."

Haku clasped his arms in his sleeves, mirroring the other former hunter-nin. "What was it, for you?" he asked. "What finally made you leave? You said you'd never abandon the Village."

Fuminshou fell silent, staring blankly at the darkened stairwell. "Higanbana," he said quietly.

Haku's heart dropped. The third of the recruits who entered the hunter-nin corps with Fuminshou and Haku, the last of them who yet lived. "What happened to her?" he asked.

"Mizukage-sama hung her brother from the post in front of the Tower," said Fuminshou, the words dropping from his mouth like stones. "She protested, and he had her whipped there as her brother's blood dripped on her from above." He huffed a humorless laugh. "And still, she defended him. 'He's the Mizukage. I was out of line. I let my emotions get the best of me.'" He sighed, deep and regretful.

"A crime, a punishment," Haku replied, just as quietly. "You told me that, before."

Fuminshou didn't speak for a long moment. "I'm tired," he admitted. "You and I and Higanbana - none of us have a very good chance of living past twenty-two."

"You've never cared about that," said Haku.

"I didn't," agreed Fuminshou. "But I never had a choice in joining the Academy or becoming a shinobi, or swearing loyalty to Kiri and Mizukage-sama." He glanced down. "I'll never be anything but a shinobi, now. A shinobi's role is sacrifice, but I won't sacrifice so that another generation of children can be ground in the dirt for being born rotbloods, for all their loyalty." He slanted a glance sideways at Haku. "Look at you," he said, an odd inflection in his voice. "You're only twelve. You were drafted to the Corps when you were ten to prove a point."

Haku could not refute. "What happened to her?" he asked instead. "Higanbana. Is she all right?"

"I don't know," said Fuminshou. "I asked her to run away with me, she brought my own team down on my head."

"I'm sorry," said Haku, closing his eyes.

"Yeah," Fuminshou murmured. "Me too."

Movement caught Haku's attention as the captain turned towards the last hallway, closely mirrored by Zabuza. Zabuza snorted. "About time."

But of the five members of the team, only two trailed Ao out into the light of the atrium. The captains Oomugi and Senkibi did not. Ao met Mei's eyes with a grim look.

Mei's mouth pressed into a thin line. "Rest a moment," she ordered softly. "Then stand guard here with Makoto. Kabocha, Satoimo and Higata, you will come with me and Fukaya. This is the last battle."

Fuminshou gave Haku a last nod and retreated to the rest of his team. Shisui likewise closed ranks so that the Hanabi-ha shinobi clustered in a loose formation.

For a moment, they just watched each other. Then Zabuza crossed his arms and said, "Let's cut the touchy-feely Leaf shit. It's a fucking mission, we're going to kill the fucking Mizukage. End of story."

Shisui huffed in amusement. The captain said, "Watch each others' backs. Our priority is that everybody on this team walks out of there alive."

"Copy that," said Shisui, all trace of humor gone.

"Hai," Haku agreed, and Itachi nodded once, sharply.

"Good," said the captain with finality. "Let's go."

The final descent into the fourth level was unremarkable but for the heat ratcheting up another notch. Sweat glistened on Maiko's neck and soaked through the captain's hair, trailing down to soak into the cloth of his mask and underarmour.

Unlike the first three levels, the fourth didn't have a maze of winding corridors and hallways rigged with traps. Instead, the room at the bottom of the stairs opened to a larger room, and that one to the massive sealing chamber engraved from walls to ceiling with hundreds of seals, which the Mizukage used as a training room. Perhaps there was more beyond that, but Haku had never been past the sealing chamber.

Mei made no attempt to hide her footsteps, and they reverberated about the room like the beating of war drums long past. The carved seals yawned above their heads, torchlight flickering along a narrow trough in the walls.

Last time he and Zabuza had come down to the sealing chamber, the Mizukage had been by himself.

This time, Yagura was not alone.

A slight figure lounged on the steps of the center dias, leaning on the hilt of the Twinsword braced between his legs. He rose at their approach, slick white hair draping momentarily in front of his face. His gaze slid past Mei at the head of their procession, Maiko and Ao flanking her, past the captain in his one-eye-scorched cat-mask, Itachi in his borrowed hunter-nin mask, and Shisui in his Konohan leopard mask, and lit on Zabuza. He ducked his head in an entirely sincere bow and greeted, "Sempai."

"Hozuki," Zabuza answered. "You gonna keep standing there?"

"Afraid so," said Mangetsu with an apologetic, pointy-toothed smile.

"Hmph," said Zabuza, settling his weight back more evenly. "This one's gotta be mine, Hatake," he said, keeping his eyes on Mangetsu; the captain hummed low under his breath and nodded assent. "Kid, with me."

Haku sidled along the length of the wall, and Mangetsu gave him an easy grin. "Good to see you, Haku-kun," he said.

A second figure sauntered forwards from behind the dias, giving the assembled shinobi a careless glance. "Ah, Yukihyou," said Akagawa in a throaty purr, prowling along the steps to Mangetsu's side. "We meet again. It seems the gods' own will that we test each other in battle once more."

"I think it'll go just like the Rishiri Islands did, don't you?" Shisui said lightly, sliding his tanto free in an easy motion.

Movement blurred out of the shadows. Maiko darted in front of Mei and caught the descending katana on hers with a loud crash. The Yondaime's Anbu commander glared at the shorter woman with icy eyes as he bore down, and chakra blazed as Maiko anchored herself along the cavern floor. Fuminshou hurled a pair of senbon and the Anbu commander jerked away to evade. Mei continued forward, unbothered, stalking past the center dias to the rear of the room as her commander strained up against the blade of her former superior.

"Stay on me, Uchiha," said the captain. "Mei, we'll do it with five."

"Indeed," Mei said, honey-smooth and predatory, and raised her voice as she prowled forward. "Yondaime-sama! Your traitors are home. There is nowhere left to run."

Chakra roiled through the cavern in reply, malevolent and overwhelming, and Haku's breath stuttered in his throat. Zabuza flinched, one hand on Kubikiribocho's hilt, and Mangetsu faltered, the smile on his face hitching.

"Ah, now you've done it," said Mangetsu, flowing the rest of the way down the steps as if he had never stopped. "Mizukage-sama is well and truly pissed now." He passed Shisui, who advanced up the steps to Akagawa, but neither of them so much as glanced at the other.

Steel clashed on steel as Maiko and the Anbu commander drew apart and met again, but Haku had eyes only for Zabuza's slow prowl as he circled to meet Mangetsu. Zabuza brought Kubikiribocho to bear; Mangetsu raised Hiramekarei.

"He's always pissed," Zabuza growled, and lunged. Kubikiribocho's blade skidded against Hiramkarei and into its hooked curve. Mangetsu twisted and yanked, but Zabuza met strength with strength, bracing against the ground, and caught them in a deadlock once again. "Suiton: Suiryuu Sanrendan no Jutsu," he spat.

Mangetsu leapt backwards, disengaging Hiramkarei as a water dragon crashed into the space where he'd been standing. He narrowly avoided the second, and the third crashed straight into his head. Hiramkarei faltered as the rest of the ninjutsu spilled onto the floor.

Mangetsu's smirk reformed before the rest of his face, the eerie glint in his eyes reappearing last of all. "Ah. You got me," he said lightly. "But you'll need something a little stronger to keep me down, sempai. _Hiramkarei Kaihou."_

Zabuza formed and substituted a mizu bunshin in the same breath to take the brunt of the damage, and Haku darted up the wall as Hiramkarei sent a barrage of chakra-blue needles flying in every direction.

With the additional height and distance, the entire battleground stretched before him, lit in glowing shades of orange not only by the firelight on the walls, but the burn of magma beyond the dias and the bloom-and-fade of katon. The air was thick and hazy, and when Haku lifted his hand, soft curls of ash landed on his outstretched fingers.

The Sanbi's chakra hung hot and heavy in the enclosed space, battering against Haku's skin and warring with his own chakra. Haku had his ice running through his chakra system, but even his skin itched, on the verge of blistering.

Zabuza planted his feet, raising Kubikiribocho easily to his shoulder. Mangetsu, wisps of steam wafting off his bare skin, lowered Hiramkarei to his side and waited.

From the time they left the Academy, as they learned and gained experience, shinobi added more ninjutsu to their repertoire, and their clashes grew fiercer, more colorful, and more destructive. But at the highest level of battle, juxtaposed with Mei and the captain and the Mizukage throwing army-killer jutsu at each other on the far side of the dias like genin might throw kunai, were two of the Seven Swordsmen staring each other down - choosing as their primary weapons not much more than the basics.

Zabuza lunged first, Kubikiribocho hissing towards Mangetsu's neck. Mangetsu twisted, sliding under the massive blade with millimeters to spare, and scythed Hiramkarei in at Zabuza's unprotected side.

Zabuza slapped the flat of the blade down with a bare hand, hard enough to jar Mangetsu's entire arm, and in the intervening moment, Haku flicked a single senbon at the pair. It hissed into the space between Zabuza's arm and Hiramkarei as each flowed around the other and sank cleanly into the tenketsu in Magnetsu's shoulder.

Mangetsu's sword arm dropped abruptly just a hair even as he snatched Hiramkarei's second hilt with his other hand, but Zabuza took the split second opportunity to plant his elbow in Mangetsu's face. It splashed apart, and a blob of water detached itself from the rest of Mangetsu's body as he staggered backwards and launched itself at Zabuza's face. It latched onto Zabuza's mask and wormed its way underneath, covering his mouth and nose - a drowning on dry land.

Except Zabuza inhaled it forcefully through his open mouth and swallowed.

Mangetsu paused, eyes wide. "Did you just _drink_ me?" he demanded, as mist coalesced to reform the top half of his head. His shoulder liquefied to drop Haku's senbon to the floor with a clatter.

"Fuck," said Zabuza empatherically, but sounded queasy. "Fuck, I'm not thinking about that shit."

"Nobody told you to do that, sempai," Mangetsu said reproachfully, prowling back and forth with slow, sure steps to keep Zabuza's bulk between him and Haku. His pounce came without a warning, Hiramkarei whistling through the air towards Zabuza in a two-handed blow. With just as much strength, Zabuza swung Kubikiribocho to meet it, but Mangetsu ripped the Twinsword's hilts apart, teeth bared in a grimace of concentration as the two blades converged on Zabuza from both above and below.

Zabuza twisted sharply midair, but he was too close; the first of Mangetsu's blades struck solidly against Kubikiribocho, the second glanced off the top and scored a gash along the length of Zabuza's collarbone. Mangetsu flicked a finger at Zabuza as the older Swordsman jerked backwards, and a tiny blur shot past Zabuza's chin and embedded itself a meter into the wall behind him.

The infamous Hozuki water bullet assassination technique. Haku reacted before the thought finished, darting sideways along the wall, and hurled a wave of senbon with enough force that the effort stole his breath. Mangetsu ducked, the second water bullet burying itself in the ground as Haku's senbon forced him backwards.

"You've trained your little weapon well, sempai," Mangetsu noted, the ghost of a smile on his face as he ducked and wove out if Haku's furious hail.

Zabuza rolled his shoulders, retrieving Kubikiribocho from where it'd planted itself tip first in the stone. "That's enough, Haku," he growled. "Save that shit for a bigger fish than Hozuki."

Haku, reluctantly, stayed his hand, but kept his fingers curled loosely around his senbon. His breath rasped in his throat as he settled in to watch, creeping steadily higher on the wall.

Mangetsu tilted his head, eerie violet eyes regarding Zabuza clinically. "There is nothing to save for. I'm afraid this is your last battle, sempai," he said apologetically. "Mizukage-sama has a kill on sight order for you."

Zabuza grinned toothily. "You think you'll be the one that'll off me? I've been doing this since you were in diapers."

"I will learn from you, as always," returned Mangetsu deferentially, and crouched, one blade swept behind him and the other cocked before him.

Zabuza swiped the dripping blood off his chest absently and smeared it into the steel of his broadsword. "Let's do this like Swordsmen," he growled. "Kirigakure no Jutsu."

Voluntarily entering a Kirigakure no Jutsu with Mangetsu, the Kijin no Sairai, was generally quite fatal; given the choice, Haku would have high-tailed it clear of the mist despite his own proficiency at silent killing. Mangetsu couldn't quite physically melt into the mist droplets, but he was untouched and Zabuza's blood betrayed him to the air even as his mist billowed out into the cavern. Zabuza, however, had built a name for himself with silent killing even before joining the Swordsmen, for stalking and assassination and slaughter out of sight of his prey, and even leaving such an obvious blood-trail, he was a formidable opponent.

The mist was saturated with Zabuza's chakra and blood, the scent cloying at the back of Haku's throat, and Mangetsu's chakra too rose up into the air to even the playing field. Rather than stay in the heart of the mist, where he was a clear liability, Haku opted to retreat, skittering back towards the entrance as it chased him.

On the hazy edges of the mist, Shisui clashed with Yuugure Akagawa, blade on blade, and sparks flew each time metal struck metal with a thunderous crash. Shisui slipped in and out of Akagawa's reach, but she was a mid-caste veteran of Kiri's jounin forces and her assault wasn't easily shaken.

A particularly strong blow of Akagawa's sword sent Shisui skidding backwards. In the second it took for him to regain his balance, her hands flashed through seals around her katana's hilt.

The ground rose up to snap at Shisui's feet, catching and tearing at his leg, and he threw himself into an instinctive shunshin sideways as Akagawa's blade flashed towards him from the front. He reappeared at Akagawa's flank, out of range of the douton, but the older kunoichi turned on her heel and caught Shisui's tanto close to her katana's hilt. Shisui shoved, and with a flare of his chakra a clone appeared at his side and sprang at Akagawa's unprotected back.

Akagawa dropped straight into the ground as it liquidized at her feet, and Shisui's clone lunged through open air and vanished. The real Shisui straightened calmly, the tanto slightly upraised at his side. He turned, the blank leopard-mask angled exactly towards where Haku perched on the wall. "I'm fine," said Shisui quietly but very clearly. "Watch the others."

Haku, chagrinned, jerked his attention away. His mission here wasn't even to back up Zabuza - a useless venture, in any case, with him and Mangetsu locked in their duel in the mist. Haku turned his attention past Fuminshou and Maiko tag-teaming the Anbu commander to the roiling chakra in the furthest depths of the room.

From the far side of the dias, the Sanbi's chakra pulsed again, foreboding and inexorable, and its miasma battered against Haku's skin even some hundred meters away. At the epicenter of its storm, a faint green mist shrouded Mei and Satoimo, keeping the bijuu's chakra at bay. Itachi's slight form lit up in a cloak of fire; it and the malicious chakra ate away at each other hungrily, each striving to devour the other.

Satoimo flitted forwards, water drills at her back, and the Mizukage whirled forebodingly to meet her with his hooked flower-staff twirling deftly in his hand. Satoimo reared back before she hit the water mirror, but her mirror image lunged out at her, blade in hand. Beniko flashed forward as Satoimo met the clone's blow, and a lightning-fast slash where the third and fourth cervical vertebrae would be dispatched the clone and sent its water drills splashing back to the ground.

The Mizukage stood in the center of the battlefield in a cloak of the Sanbi's chakra, his impassive expression at odds with the malice emanating from him in waves. Undeterred, he let the mirror dissolve and slammed both hands coated with the Sanbi's chakra into the ground, sending thousands of tiny specks exploding outwards.

Haku ducked as something rocketed towards his face, and his hands flashed through seals to raise an ice shield before him as the tiny projectiles peppered the wall around him, hitting his ice with quiet clinks where they stuck. Haku peered at them through the translucent ice - they were tiny corals, irregularly shaped and firmly glued to its surface.

On the ground, Mei's hand snapped out, and a wall of molten lava shot up in front of her and Beniko. The coral hissed as it impacted, shrivelling into black lumps. Satoimo, much closer to the Mizukage, cried out as the coral splattered against her face and arms. The captain, just behind Satoimo, covered his head with one vambrace, shielding his masked face from the brunt of the attack. Itachi flitted backwards and wove in and out of the coral, and not a single one so much as touched the ends of his hair.

The barrage stopped. For a split second, all the combatants stood frozen, eyeing the coral scattered on the walls, the floor, and each other.

The coral erupted all at once, multiplying in size and weight as it grew. Haku's ice shattered as the coral burrowed into its surface, and he hurriedly created another mirror to drop onto as more crowded the wall around him.

Satoimo had time for one panicked gasp before the coral enveloped her from head to toe. Blood and viscera sprayed as coral punctured muscle and bone alike. Her body dropped to the floor with a soft thud and was rapidly buried under the massive polyps.

The captain staggered under the sudden weight of the coral and his hands blurred through the seals to light himself up with bolts of lightning. They crackled over his form and the coral, and bits of the burnt creatures flaked off his form. Too little too late - the captain went down as the polyps smothered his mask. The blood that marked the spot where he had fallen, however, vanished into a nearly imperceptible white smoke as Haku watched.

Torchlight flashed off metal as without hesitation, Maiko's sword snapped out and took off Fuminshou's arm below the elbow, and the massive bloom of coral sprouting from his forearm with it. It crashed to the ground and Fuminshou stumbled backwards, clutching the stump of his arm even as Maiko moved to put herself between her maimed teammate and the impassive Anbu commander. "Retreat," she ordered Fuminshou, her voice tight.

The loss of a hand was a career-ending injury for a shinobi, and almost always fatal. Fuminshou, his face white and blood streaming from his arm to splatter on his clothing and the ground, backed away.

The coral stopped growing, but the battlefield now was uneven and treacherous. Silent and terrible, the Mizukage presided over the epicenter of the carnage with a blank face, power and pure chakra radiating off his figure. Haku shivered as the Sanbi's sakki washed over him.

Mei's mask cracked, as she turned first to the spot where her kunoichi had fallen, then to watch Fuminshou's wavering retreat, her fury twisting her face into an ugly scowl. "Monster," she snarled. "Youton: Youkai no Jutsu!" and Beniko darted out from behind her, katana sheathed in favor of a supporting douton.

"Goodbye. This is the end for you," the Mizukage said quietly, and his ire, amplified by the Sanbi's malevolence, swamped the combatants. At once the Bijuu exploded out of his small form with a ferocious cry and a bloom of corrosive chakra. The Sanbi loomed over the three shinobi at its feet, pale flames licking its shell and one golden eye squinted in hateful resentment as it opened its hooked mouth and spat a rolicking tidal wave that swamped Mei's lava and turned it back on her.

The Sanbi's chakra roared through the entire chamber, burning away Zabuza's mist and slamming both the Anbu commander and Maiko, locked swords and all, into the far wall. Haku dropped fully into his mirror, frantically bolstering it with his chakra a split second before the shockwave crashed over him. The edges of his ice burned, steam billowing up in opaque white clouds, but it held. When the chakra abated, Haku pulled himself out from the protective envelopment of his ice. He saw no sign of Shisui or Akagawa; whether both had escaped or had been burned to ash, he could not tell.

Zabuza, his armour liberally splattered in blood and a deep slash through the midriff, rose up from behind Kubikiribocho, planted firmly in the ground as a makeshift barricade, and prowled purposefully towards the Sanbi, heedless of the coral warping his path. He yanked the broadsword out of the ground as he passed it, and the side that had faced the jinchuuriki's assault bubbled, half the blade eaten away by the corrosive chakra. Behind him lay Mangetsu, the color of his skin and clothes washed out and his body half-formed in a pool of water. Hiramkarei, its twin blades joined together once more, lay where it had fallen just beyond its owner's outstretched hand.

The Sanbi crouched suddenly, and Mei shouted, "Run!" as she herself bolted. Beniko stumbled, her foot tangled in the coral, and the captain reappeared in time to tackle her out of the way of the beast's _Kagenade_.

The jinchuuriki blasted past in a whorl of chakra, burning furrows in the ground in his wake and narrowly missing Itachi as he dropped out of his shunshin. The Sanbi hit the wall with a thunderous crash that rattled the entire cavern and set the seals etched in the walls aglow as they resisted his power. He turned far too nimbly than his bulk suggested possible, and barrelled straight for Mei in a flash.

Not even Mei would try to stand against a transformed jinchuuriki head on. She whirled out of the way, the skirts of her battle-dress flying; having missed his target a second time, the Mizukage-Sanbi skidded to a stop in the center of the cavern. He swiped glowing claws at her and this time she stood her ground and spat an acid mist that burned the reaching claws. "You're not invincible," she purred, only slightly breathless as the sweat plastered her hair to her face.

The jinchuuriki only snarled in response and stamped a foot to summon coral bursting forth from the ground towards Mei. Beniko slammed chakra and both hands into the ground and an earthen pillar carried Mei up and out of reach. The demon turtle whirled on Itachi instead, snapping at the comparatively tiny figure too fast to dodge.

" _Susano'o."_ Instead of flesh, the Sanbi's mouth closed around a great skeletal ribcage forged of chakra glowing a fiery red. At its epicenter, Itachi stared up calmly, arms loose at his side as the jinchuuriki drew back with a frustrated cry.

Zabuza's chakra coiled around him as he growled, "Suiton: Mizurappa!" The jutsu roared ahead of him, crashing down with enough force to dislodge the coral from the ground and send them swirling along the ground. It was a strong jutsu with all of Zabuza's ferocity and will behind it, and the Sanbi, eye still fixed on the spectral skeleton over Itachi, didn't even bother to glance at him as it broke against his chakra cloak.

But the suiton and the heat of the Sanbi's chakra worked just as effectively as the Stormbringer's tempest had aboard the Jurojinmaru, and the air around the captain crackled as he moulded lightning to his will. Even so far away, the captain's proclamation of, _"Raijuu,"_ set the hairs on the back of Haku's neck standing on end. The raiton screamed out of the air, and in the closed space the wolf rivalled the Sanbi in size. It lunged at the bijuu fearlessly, snapping at its neck, and the Sanbi let out a piercing cry as blue-white lightning sparked over its shell.

Mei's chakra surged in time with the captain's. "Youton: Akkorokamui!" she breathed, and the tentacles of her lava-beast, large enough to match both the Sanbi and the captain's Raijuu, caught the hobbled Sanbi in its grasp and squeezed.

Zabuza's chakra surged again, and this time he growled, "Suiton: Fuyudori!" From the depths of the chamber, a great bird winged its way into existence, trailing seafoam from its feathers as it dove. It was graceful and wild and powerful, and even next to the captain's Raijuu, it was the most beautiful thing Haku had ever seen. It swooped low over the Sanbi and raked razor talons over the bulbous head, wheeling around for a second pass.

The Sanbi screeched deep in its throat and wrenched itself back and forth to no avail; the ninjutsu beasts held it fast. Its beaked mouth parted, and in that space gathered a ball of chakra, dense and a malignant purplish-black that pulsated a sakki so oppressive Haku's heart stuttered in his chest. Beniko barely flinched, flashing through the seals to turn the ground beneath the Mizukage into a sticky swamp.

Still, the Bijuudama grew.

Mei's chakra swirled about her form, dense and potent yet only a pale flame beside the Sanbi's. "We almost have him. Don't let him go!"

"If he gets that off, we all die," the captain shot back, but his Rajuu gripped the Sanbi's neck tighter and yanked its head to the side with still more savagery.

"Do not release him, Taichou," Itachi said, his voice soft but firm below the shriek of battle.

As Haku watched, the skeleton ribs around Itachi grew a skull, then four bony arms, until the bony frame of a massive humanoid of that fiery chakra bloomed around him. It held out one hand and in it a narrow sword formed even as muscle layered itself over its arm.

The Sanbi jerked to face the forming Susano'o, heedless of the lava _akkorokamui_ constricting around its shell or the lightning wolf worrying at its throat. Its eye narrowed, and the chakra at its mouth stilled, an oddly innocuous orb with only a dainty violet glow to betray the pure, potent power condensed within.

"Itachi," the captain warned, terse, as the Sanbi's chakra reached a fever pitch. Itachi's head dipped in acknowledgement, and instead of gaining bulk the Susano'o held out another skeletal hand and summoned to it a great fiery shield.

Two things happened at the same time. The first: the Bijudama rocketed free of the Sanbi's jaws with a shriek of rushing wind and fire. It tore through the air and obliterated Zabuza's Fuyudori, leaving only hot steam in its wake as it shot towards Itachi. The second: Itachi's eyes flicked up sharply.

" _Yata no Kagami."_

The Bijudama ricocheted off the Susano'o's shield. The Sanbi's eye had time only to widen before its own orb struck the jinchuuriki full in the chest.

Haku scrambled back into the protection of his ice desperately. The resulting explosion threw out a white light so complete Haku could see nothing but black, and the force of the shockwave shattered his mirror and hurled him from its shards. He hit the wall and cracked his head against the stone, then plummeted to the ground, his lungs paralyzed as his fingers scrabbled feebly for his senbon. He coughed, blood filling the back of his mouth and throat with its metallic tang, and he forced his head to the side to let it spill onto the ground.

Absolute silence rang harsh in his ears. Haku blinked away the darkness and reached for his chakra to haul himself to his hands and knees, and his head spun and throbbed in unison from the effort. All around the cavern, containment seals carved into the walls lit up, whole and potent with the absorbed chakra, but others had cracked, raining chunks of stone down onto the scorched battlefield.

The bijuu's chakra had burned away save a faint glow shrouding the Mizukage's form, the massive Raijuu and Akkorokamui jutsu annihilated in the same blast that hobbled the Sanbi. Only the skeletal ribcage of Susano'o remained, looming protectively over Itachi's slight form, but even he had been thrown against the wall like a ragdoll. His mask had been knocked askew, and he reached up to pull it free entirely and wiped the rivulets of blood trickling from his eyes.

Zabuza's crumpled form shifted from the bottom of the steps leading to the dias. His pale armor had been scorched black, his sleeves burned away and the skin beneath blistered red. The captain, one hand braced against the ground behind the remains of the low douton wall Zabuza had raised to shelter them both, shook his head like a dog, bright crimson splattered in his hair.

The Mizukage turned, battered but upright, and prowled forward with pale pink eyes locked on Mei as she peeled herself out of a crater in the wall behind the crumbling remnants of her hasty barrier. Blood trickled from her mouth and soaked into her battle-dress, and she swayed on her feet. Beniko lurched into his path desperately, sword drawn and teeth bared, but her hair was matted with blood and her leg twisted unnaturally. The Yondaime backhanded her without a second glance, sending her crashing back down as he continued his inexorable advance.

Lightning crackled, but rather than the captain, it came from Shisui's fists, colliding with the chakra that swirled to meet it. Shisui flashed out of the darkness to intercept the Mizukage, and though their clash was muffled by the ringing silence in Haku's ears, the Mizukage's retaliation sent sparks of Shisui's yellow-white lightning showering through the air and Shisui skidding backwards.

The moment of distraction was enough for the captain to rise to his feet, and he darted forward with kunai in hand. The Mizukage whirled, miasma bubbling over his skin and clawed hand outstretched, and the captain summoned lightning to shield his kunai and match him blow for blow. But the energy in his hand fizzled out between one strike and the next, and even as Shisui dove back into the fray, the Mizukage slammed a chakra-wreathed fist into the captain's shoulder, a blow lessened only by the captain twisting to the side at the last minute. The captain fell with a grunt, and only Kubikiribocho, scything in a low arc just above his head, saved him from a second straight through the chest.

The broadsword struck the Mizukage's arm, shrouded in chakra to block the blade, and the corroded metal shattered. Shards sprayed over the Mizukage as he whirled to deflect Shisui's tanto lit along the blade with fire-chakra. Zabuza didn't even spare the breath to curse, his eyes narrowed as he lunged once more, and the jagged remains of Kubikiribocho's blade sliced neatly under Shisui's next raiton.

The Sanbi's sakki pulsed, and a wave of pure chakra blasted out from the Mizukage to blow the Hanran and Hanabi-ha shinobi backwards. Yagura stood in the eye of the storm unmoved and untouched. But Haku had been trained as a predator even if he wasn't quite one yet, and even from so far out he could see the Mizukage's skin blistering and healing in the same breath, slightly pinkened patches erupting and subsiding as his chakra lost equilibrium with his bijuu. The Mizukage had burned away his own and the Sanbi's chakra first with the Bijudama, then to shield himself from the same attack. He was, if not vulnerable, then a little less invulnerable than before. He surveyed the battlefield, his eyes as cold and empty as before, but the sharks were circling now, and like Haku, they tasted blood in the water.

Beniko splinted her own leg brutally with strips of cloth and the sheath of her katana, silently and with teeth gritted as her face turned bone-white from the pain. Mei hovered over her protectively, feet braced and her hands folded in a seal, but she had eyes only for the Mizukage. Chakra rippled around her, unformed and ready to be released.

Shisui and Itachi rose as one, twin hunters stalking forward - one shrouded with the fiery chakra of _Susano'o,_ the other merely a slight shadow with a mask and armour covered in blood. With a ragged Kubikiribocho in hand, Zabuza towered over the captain, who crouched close to the ground; with a sleight of hand so quick Haku nearly missed it, the captain slipped a chakra pill under his mask. His mismatched eyes tracked the Mizukage unerringly.

Mei exhaled a sigh and blew a mist over the Mizukage acidic enough to gnaw hungrily at the edges of his chakra shroud. The Mizukage's eyes narrowed and with a sharp jerk of one hand, he brushed the mist aside even as it scalded his bare arm.

Shisui pressed the attack, flowing in just as the mist dissipated, with his tanto wreathed in fire. Itachi lurked at his back. The Mizukage spun neatly out of Shisui's path, ducking his strike, and coral exploded out of the ground and narrowly missed Shisui. In that moment Itachi closed in, flowing forward even as Shisui fell back. He no longer had Susano'o's sword or even its arms, but its ribs sheltered him still as he cast a plume of fire that brushed the ceiling as it licked against the Mizukage's retaliatory suiton.

Mei strode forward while Beniko regained her feet, and the floor turned to magma beneath the Mizukage. He collapsed in a haze of mist, and reappeared behind Itachi as Mei sprinted across the boiling ground through the remains of his clone. Itachi whirled, the crimson glow of his doujutsu bright against pale skin marred only by bloody tear tracks, and spat a volley of fireballs.

The Mizukage's own eyes glinted predatorily in the darkness, narrowed as he twirled the bo staff in one hand and raised the other before him, and a watery mirror formed at his outstretched palm. Itachi's eyes widened, and he jolted to the side, but the Mizukage hooked the mirror flat and the mirror clones of both Itachi and Mei - youton, Susano'o ribcage, and all - sprang with them. Itachi's clone charged to meet him as he darted through the remains of the two katons' collision. Mei swerved grimly away from the Mizukage and her own mirror clone spat a stream of lava just as she did the same.

Shisui pounced at the Yondaime's back in his distraction, too fast and too close for him to call up another mirror, but his tanto skittered off the curved hook of his staff. Shisui twisted midair like a cat and caught the Mizukage in the back of the head with his heel in a glancing blow that nevertheless sent him stumbling forwards. Zabuza was ready and waiting for him, and swung hard and fast for the Mizukage's head. When the Mizukage twisted and battered the sword aside with his staff, Shisui blitzed back in, blade first, and the Mizukage shoved Zabuza off to parry Shisui.

Zabuza charged. The captain gathered a fistful of lighting that shrieked loud enough to cut through to Haku's muffled hearing and shone bright enough to leave imprints of its image in the air behind it. Just as the Mizukage spat a flurry of water bullets at Shisui, Zabuza brought Kubikiribocho crashing down overhead and the Mizukage aborted the rest of the jutsu to block, his face darkening into a scowl as the blow jarred his upraised staff. As fast as the lightning he wielded, the captain blurred under their locked weapons and plunged his hand up into the Mizukage's chest.

Haku's breath froze in his throat.

Zabuza backed up, Kubikiribocho still raised warily. Shisui, crouched on the floor, let the fire lighting his blade smoulder out. Itachi and Mei, their mirror clones vanquished, watched with chakra coiled beneath their hands, and Beniko paused halfway through a sequence of seals.

The Mizukage smiled.

"You should have gone for the head," he said gently, and laid feather-light fingers on the captain's arm still impaled through his chest. Coral exploded from the place the Mizukage touched, ripping its way along the captain's arm through cloth, armour, and skin alike to his neck and down his chest. The captain choked, sagged, and exploded into blue-white lightning. The Mizukage cried out involuntarily as the lightning crackled up and down his entire body, and he dropped to one knee, bracing against his staff.

Zabuza, never one to waste an opening, wrestled a water vortex into existence and sent it hurtling towards the Mizukage. A dragon dripping molten lava reared over Mei's head, and another of pale stone tore itself from the ground before Beniko. The two struck in tandem.

With an uncharacteristic show of rage, the Mizukage blasted all three converging jutsu back with a wave of pure, malevolent chakra and a snarl on his face. Zabuza's vortex evaporated with a hiss of steam. Beniko's doujutsu fractured, spraying the kunoichi with the remains of her own dragon, while Mei's solidified in midair and crashed to the floor nearly on top of her.

"Kage-Killer Kakashi, the Raijuu. You have my respect. The stories of your prowess are not exaggerated," Yagura said, the frayed calm in his voice now only a thin veil for the bloodlust that lurked underneath. Blood soaked the cloth around the ragged tear in his shirt. The hole in his chest rapidly closed, filled in with the Sanbi's chakra until organs and bone and skin knit themselves back together. The bijuu's chakra crept back to cover his skin entirely. And then, impossibly, his shroud once again sprouted a second tail.

"Fuck!" Zabuza aborted his charge, veering back towards Itachi. "Where the hell is he getting that chakra?"

"We need to end this quickly, before the bijuu regains its strength," Mei said tersely, stepping out from the shadow of her hardened lava-dragon.

"I think we just tried to," Shisui pointed out.

The Mizukage rose to his feet, spinning his staff up behind him. His left eye had drifted closed, and his right glowed a malevolent gold. "The end is near," he promised with another, more malicious voice in discordant unison with his dispassionate tone. "Killing brings me no pleasure, but for all your crimes, you fought well. I will remember you."

"Pretentious asshole," muttered Zabuza.

"Now is not the time to hold anything back," Mei warned. "Hatake - your tricks are clever, but they're not enough to bring him down."

The captain, squatting on the lava-dragon's head, said, "Hm."

"Yet the commander is the only one of us to have landed a significant blow," Shisui said with an edge to his voice. Mei narrowed her eyes but did not respond.

Itachi said, "Commander." Blood still dripped steadily from his eyes. The last ghostly remnants of Susano'o flickered and faded away when he blinked.

The captain turned to meet his eyes. "I'll take point," he said after a pause. "You know what to do."

"I can't do much, but I'll cover you," Beniko said grimly. "I - "

Whatever else she might have said was interrupted by the geyser that erupted under Itachi's feet without warning. He flitted to the side, the scything blades in his eyes whirling rapidly and his hands flying through seals, but the boiling spray caught him in the shoulder with enough force to send him flying. Itachi had just enough time, in the split second before a ring of the geysers slammed him into the ceiling, to exhale a dozen tiny butterflies with wings made of red-gold flames. The captain leapt to catch him before he hit the ground, spiriting him to the relative safety of the dias. He did not get up.

Shisui snarled, a wild, alien sound of rage so different from the unconcerned demeanor Haku had always known him to wear. His tanto ignited once more, and with a slash he hurled a crescent blade of fire at the Mizukage. The Mizukage jerked his hand up and another geyser slammed up and through the fire, and Shisui was forced to zigzag towards the far wall as the Mizukage's suiton burst out of the ground at his heels.

A flurry of tornados, nearly invisible in the flickering firelight, reared up behind the Mizukage as Zabuza poured his chakra into the fuuton. He sent them flying forward with a jerk of his sword, and the captain spat a fireball taller than himself and Zabuza combined. The katon caught Zabuza's tornados with a bright flash and a muted roar and barreled towards the Mizukage as a blazing maelstrom. Beniko slammed both hands into the ground, and a wall of rock rumbled out of the ground at the Mizukage's back, penning him in.

The Mizukage crouched, and the fire broke over the coral shell that snaked into place above him. As the last of the flames licked the scorched coral, he rose from its crumbing remains and sent large chunks shooting out towards Zabuza. Almost simultaneously, Mei spat a wall of lava to intercept the projectiles as Zabuza jerked in one direction and the captain darted straight for the Mizukage. A clone split from the captain and ran alongside, and when the captain summoned lightning to his open hand, the clone did the same. The lava closed over their heads, and the Mizukage's coral sizzled harmlessly against it.

The captain threw his hand out to his clone. A _buzz-snap_ preceded the jutsu as lightning jumped from the captain to his clone so that each wielded one side of the crackling blue-white cord. It sliced through coral and Sanbi-chakra alike as the captain and his clone darted in a wide circle around the Mizukage from either side, and the Mizukage snarled as it lashed his arms to his sides. He yanked on the lightning restraints, but the captain dug his heels in, bracing himself against the floor to hold the Mizukage down. The Mizukage stamped a foot, and stone blades coated in the Sanbi's chakra hurtled towards the captain, only to be intercepted by Zabuza's suiton whipping through the air. Itachi's katon butterflies, since forgotten in the chaos, alighted delicately on the Mizukage's shoulders and detonated one after the other, rocking the very air and sending the Mizukage to his knees.

"Youton: Jigoku-mon," intoned Mei breathlessly, her eyes smouldering with a feverish light. _Hell's Gate._

Lava cascaded from the ceiling and exploded from the floor, four columns framing a massive wall of superheated stone. It lit the cavern with its yellow-white glow and engulfed the Mizukage's hunched form from above and below. The captain leapt out of the way as the two halves of the youton collided. Sakki surged, thick and suffocating as the Sanbi's chakra warred with Mei's lava.

The Mizukage screamed.

It was raw pain and rage and desperation in the same breath and it sliced through Haku's mostly-recovered hearing. The Sanbi's chakra faded, burned away by the inexorable force that was Terumi Mei's kekkei-genkai.

A minute ticked past in plodding seconds. A second passed, slower than the first. The youton wall dimmed, turning black as it cooled.

Mei peeled back the lava with a wave of her hand until the Mizukage's head was exposed. The Sanbi's chakra had saved him from immediate death, but even a jinchuuriki must have limits. Patches of untouched skin on his face patchworked with scorched skin cracked to reveal raw flesh beneath. The acrid scent of burnt meat drifted through the air as Mei advanced slowly.

The Mizukage's rose-pink eyes were calm as he watched her approach. He did not struggle. Haku wondered how much of his body was still intact, if his nerves still worked, and if he could feel pain.

Mei stopped in front of him, and for a silent moment, their eyes met and held. Whatever Mei saw in his, her eyes softened. "I will take care of Kirigakure, Yondaime-sama," Mei said, wrapping her fingers around his throat lightly.

"I know," said the Mizukage wearily, and his eyes drifted shut as Mei squeezed.

Zabuza huffed a sigh. The captain let the lightning sparking weakly around his hands fade away.

Beniko slammed her hands into the ground and hurled a barrage of scale-shaped stone blades at the captain. The captain whirled, the tomoe of his doujutsu spinning madly as it calculated the path of least damage. The blades hissed audibly through the air as they shot towards him, blurs of pale grey too fast to distinguish.

Haku was faster.

He crossed the space as fast as light, bursting out of the mirror he threw up in front of the captain and deflecting each stone blade with a precise senbon. They rained down between them harmlessessly, and Beniko narrowed her eyes. Haku, his chakra curling about him in icy waves, let another set of senbon slip down between his fingers and waited.

"What the fuck, Mei?" Zabuza said, sounding neither surprised nor particularly concerned. Haku looked him up and down critically. Except for the skin covered by his vambraces, his arms were scorched and raw, and blood pulsed sluggishly out of a slash in his midriff. He held Kubikiribocho easily in one hand, nothing in his stance suggesting he was in pain.

Ao melted out of the shadows, sliding around the side of the dias, and in a blur of movement Shisui dropped out of a shunshin between him and Itachi in a hunting cat's crouch, tanto held before him warningly. Haku didn't turn to look, not with Beniko in front of him and the captain at his back, but he cast his senses out and picked out a heartbeat stalking along the far wall - Makoto, then. But then that heartbeat was joined by another, then another.

Haku created a mirror with a handsign and a twist of chakra, and between the jumping shadows cast by the firelight caught sight of the newcomers - members of the team that had stayed behind on the second level.

"We don't need to be your enemy," the captain said levelly, his mask angled slightly towards the fresh team. Shisui, poised protectively in front of Itachi's unmoving body, said nothing, but his sakki curled off his form threateningly.

"It's nothing personal," Mei assured him. She made no move to call off her shinobi. Instead, she tilted her head towards Zabuza. "One day," she said, and Zabuza twitched. "Just one day."

Zabuza considered her silently, Kubikiribocho loose at his side. For all that he resented the Village and all that had been done to him in its name, Kirigakure was still Zabuza's home; for all that he had spent over a year cutting them down, those shinobi were still his comrades. If Zabuza chose Kiri over Hanabi-ha, Haku would do his duty.

 _You said we wouldn't let her,_ Haku thought wildly but didn't say aloud. _You brought me here to stop her._

The captain was spent; Haku had seen him taking the chakra pill earlier, and that was a short-term solution leading to an even worse crash. Shisui had fought Yuugure before joining the battle against he Mizukage. Itachi was unconscious.

If ever there was a time for Zabuza to switch sides, it would be now. He rolled his shoulders. He eyed Mei, regal and battlestained; Shisui, crouched low to the ground as he warded off Ao; the captain behind Haku, watching Zabuza back. He focused on Haku, then, and surely he couldn't see Haku's uneasiness under his mask, but his eyes sharpened decisively. "Sorry, Mei," growled Zabuza, stepping between her and Shisui. "You're gonna have to go through me."

Mei nodded, betraying her disappointment for a split second, before her eyes hardened. "That won't be a problem, old friend," she purred.

The captain cleared his throat politely. "I would reconsider," he suggested, and when Haku turned his head so the captain's face was at the edge of his field of view, the tomoe revolving in his eye morphed into hooked, scything blades dark against the bloody glow of his Sharingan.

Shisui hissed a startled breath between his teeth, his shock on full display for a split second before he wrestled it back down.

Mei's eyes flicked between the captain and Shisui warily. She didn't know what that change in doujutsu meant - Haku barely knew - but between Shisui's reaction and what she had witnessed of the captain's battle capabilities, it was enough to make her hesitate. Her eyes narrowed. On the ground, Itachi's eyes slit open. He made no move to rise, but Mei caught that movement as well, and her mouth firmed into a grim slash. "And here I thought we agreed to hold nothing back," she commented lightly.

"It was a one-sided agreement from my perspective," the captain deflected, loose and casual. "I never agreed to such a thing. And I don't believe you hold the moral high ground here."

A battle here, now, would grow very messy very fast. Mei knew that. She had underestimated the Mizukage as much as they had, and she was paying the cost in exhaustion. And if the Hana-ha shinobi hadn't been fighting all out before, they certainly would now.

Zabuza, as he did so well, radiated smugness. Haku allowed his frigid chakra to surge at his tenketsu, and frost crept across his hands.

"Fine," Mei said magnanimously, and signalled Ao with a jerk of her chin. "Stand down," she ordered her shinobi, and slowly, they eased from their predatory stances. Mei turned back to the captain, who had closed his Sharingan, relaxing his posture into a careless almost-slouch. "You can go," she said, brusque. "Return to the surface. Zabuza knows the way."

Itachi sat up and rose to his feet, brushing his clothes off facetiously, and in the far team, Deitan jumped like a startled cat. Shisui stretched languidly and sheathed his tanto.

"Maa," the captain said lightly. "I don't think we will. Someone will have to tell the others if you all die a horrible death resealing the Sanbi."

Haku's eyes snapped involuntarily to the spot where the Mizukage was suspended. The only part of him visible was his hair, dusky grey and streaked with blood and soot.

This time, Mei couldn't hide her irritation when she snapped, "Fine. Stay out of our way." She didn't have the manpower to make them leave, and they both knew it.

The captain hummed and patted Haku's hair absently. "Go," he directed.

Their team converged, Haku and the captain weaving around the debris to where Shisui and Itachi waited at the base of the dias, and Zabuza stalked towards them with a suspicious glare at the Hanran shinobi clustered at the far wall. Shisui stretched languidly, twisting around to watch Mei with blatant curiosity.

Zabuza stopped abruptly not far past the dias, glaring incredulously at a conspicuously empty patch of ground. "Son of a bitch," he grumbled. "Those Hozuki brats just never die." The half-puddle, half-man that had evidently not been Mangetsu's corpse had vanished, and Hiramekarei with its owner. Zabuza slanted a glance over at Shisui. "You sure yours stayed down?"

"No," Shisui admitted. "I got in a pretty good hit, but to be completely honest, I didn't think it'd be worth it to hunt her down after the Bijudama."

Zabuza shrugged. "Eh. Not our problem."

"Yet," the captain interjected, long-suffering. "It's fine."

A darker shape caught Haku's eye and he reached up his sleeves for his senbon, but it was just Maiko, limping towards Mei and the Mizukage grimly. Her shoulder was bound roughly with torn cloth, and her neck bled sluggishly from a thin slash along her jawline, but she held her head up proudly. Behind her lay the Anbu commander, impaled by his own sword, which stood straight up from his chest like a mast. She nodded at Zabuza as she passed, quirked a smile stained with blood at the edges. Zabuza huffed a silent laugh and flipped her an ironic salute.

"Here," said the captain, veering off to a corner. "This is about as good of a vantage point as we'll get." A better vantage point would have been up the wall, but Haku was pretty sure none of them wanted to expend the chakra for that.

"Hey, Z, give me your arms," said Shisui. "How the hell have you not gone into septic shock? How much blood have you lost? Do you feel cold?"

"I'm durable," Zabuza said blankly. "Quit babying me."

"Sit down," the captain ordered. "You're about to lose both of your arms unless you get medical attention right now." He did not offer his; Haku was quite certain that given his chakra levels, he could not.

Zabuza, glowering, sat. "Shoulda let Mei barbeque you," he muttered spitefully.

The captain loomed over him benevolently. "What was that?"

"I'm sitting," Zabuza snarled.

Haku slid down to sit with his back against the wall, and Itachi sank down to join him. Behind and above them, glowing lines of chakra still flickered along the stone, ebbing now that there was no bijuu damage to contain. The light danced over Itachi's face. He had deactivated his doujutsu a while ago, but rusty tear tracks still trailed from his eyes to his jaw.

Shisui crouched in front of Zabuza and snapped his fingers. Nothing happened. Zabuza eyed him dubiously. Shisui's mask tilted slightly in consternation, and he snapped his fingers again, to the same result.

"Can I get a new medic?" Zabuza drawled. "This one's broken."

"Shut up," Shisui grumbled, and snapped his fingers a third time with greater emphasis. Green chakra sparked at his fingers, flaring up before settling down towards his palm. He traced his hands down Zabuza's arm to the edge of his bracer, silent as he concentrated. "Take that off," he said absently. Zabuza tugged it off gingerly, baring a clear divide on his skin between burned and unburned. Shisui hissed between his teeth. "Shit," he muttered under his breath, and let the iryou chakra fade.

"Shit? What 'shit'? Hasn't anyone ever told you not to say that in front of the patient?" Zabuza demanded, but the line of his shoulders tensed uneasily. "Oh, wait, _I definitely have,_ the last time you pulled that bullshit on me."

"I'm not an iryou-nin, I don't need to follow those rules," Shisui fired back, clearly distracted. "Taichou," he said, then hesitated.

The captain was already watching. He hiked his mask up to the top of his head, tugging down the bandana over his closed Sharingan as he leaned around for a better look. "Too deep," he said, dark eye crinkled in disapproval.

"Yeah," Shisui agreed, poking experimentally at the edges of a burn. "This - this tissue is all dead. It'll eat into the healthy stuff. Necrosis."

"Fancy medic-nin language," the captain noted dryly. "But yes. It's all going to have to be removed."

"You can't fucking skin my fucking arms!" Zabuza spat, jerking back.

"Calm down and stop moving," Shisui snapped. "Taichou and I can't do that - that's major trauma surgery. You have to be on Shizune-sensei's level to handle something like that."

Zabuza was not appeased by this. "So you're just going to let me walk around with dead fucking flesh that will _eat_ the not-burned flesh?" he demanded.

Shisui rolled his eye. "You'll be fine til we get back topside. It's not that fast. What's important is - "

"Dehydration," the captain finished. "You will die very soon unless you get more fluids in you. Also, infection. Septic shock."

Haku shifted uneasily. "Ha," said Zabuza.

The captain did not laugh. Shisui did not laugh. Itachi did not laugh. Zabuza eyed them warily. "You're serious," he realized.

"Haku-kun," said Shisui. "You got enough in you for a small suiton? He needs to drink and probably a blood transfusion." He glanced at the captain for confirmation, who nodded.

The only source of water down here was on the far side of the room, separated from them by the dias, Mei, and an unconscious jinchuuriki. Creating a cup out of ice and filling it with water took just a little chakra and even less effort. He reached out to give it to Zabuza, but Itachi intercepted him, plucking it neatly out of his hand.

"Rinse the burn with cool water," said Shisui, in the tone of someone reciting from a manual, and Itachi splashed its contents onto Zabuza's arm.

"Ow, motherfucker!" Zabuza snapped.

Shisui passed the cup back. "Could you refill that, Haku-kun? He does need to rehydrate. Itachi, help me? I have a couple punctures I need bandaged."

"Blood transfusion," said the captain. "What type are you, Momochi?"

"What, you gonna do it here?" Zabuza demanded. "The fuck, you carry IV shit around with you?"

A pause. "Yes?" said the captain, sounding more sheepish than Haku had ever heard him. From a pouch under his armor, he pulled out a compact med kit. Inside were three different kinds of bandages, two types of tubing, a roll of tape, another of needles of varying shapes and sizes, suture thread, and more that Haku couldn't see.

"Holy shit," said Shisui, vaguely stunned. "Taichou." Itachi, unaffected as ever, continued wrapping the stab wound just under Shisui's collarbone.

"You know how to start an IV, right?" the captain asked briskly. "Momochi, blood type."

"Of course," Shisui said.

"A," muttered Zabuza. "Positive."

"Hey, me too," said Shisui, "but I don't know how much I can give you and still be combat ready."

"I'm type O," said the captain. "I can give some."

"I'm O as well," Haku interjected quickly. That much he knew, but how it was relevant to the blood thing he didn't know.

Itachi lifted his head slightly. "I am AB."

"You are the least useful one here," Zabuza informed him helpfully.

"I'll start," said the captain, selecting two large needles and a wrapped alcohol patch. He uncoiled a length of tubing and did something to the ends involving small plastic bits and the needles that ended with a double-ended needle-tube. Then to Zabuza, "Lie down."

"You're fucking kidding me," growled Zabuza, having watched the captain with an increasingly incredulous squint. "You're not fucking serious." The captain glanced at him mildly. He waited.

Zabuza glowered for just a second more in protest of the inevitable and then eased himself down slowly. Haku stripped his cloak off hurriedly, passing it to Shisui, who bundled it roughly under Zabuza's head.

The captain tied a band around his bicep, yanking it tight with his teeth. He swabbed a patch of skin on his arm with practiced movements and inserted the needle in one smooth jab. The captain unclamped the tube and it filled with blood, spurting out the needle on the other end before he plugged it.

"I just have to say," said Zabuza, putting up one final, halfhearted defense. "What the fuck."

"Hold still," Shisui admonished, frowning now that he could see the wound tearing through Zabuza's stomach more clearly. Blood already saturated the cloth around the rip, darkening it to a reddish-black. "Give me the suturing stuff. I'm going to stitch him up or everything we put in leaks back out.

While Zabuza was distracted, the captain swiped the crook of his arm and jabbed the second needle in. "There," he said, as Zabuza sputtered. "Drink your water."

"Hey, Haku-kun," said Shisui, threading a curved needle. "You know what's going on over there?" He nodded over to the other side of the cavern.

"Not yet," Haku said. A single handseal was all he needed to create a pair of mirrors, angled to give him an unobstructed view of Mei's team.

"Take care not to spend too much chakra," Itachi warned.

Haku registered his voice only faintly. "They're drawing blood seals," he said, hushed, as he watched Maiko direct the others. "Mixing ink and blood, tracing the seals on the floor." The mirrors, thin, fragile things, flaked and crumbled away as he spoke.

"Speaking of blood," Shisui interjected pointedly. "Taichou, you lost blood too."

"Hm," said the captain. "I did. Only a few more minutes from me, then." He stiffened abruptly in the middle of adjusting the needle in his arm, turning towards the door. "Someone's coming," he said, as Itachi and Haku swivelled to look. Haku reached for his chakra.

Zabuza tried to sit up. Shisui thwarted his efforts with a firm hand on his shoulder. "I'm trying to keep your guts inside your body," he admonished.

"It's that fucking bastard. I can feel his chakra," Zabuza snarled. "Fucking Michishio."

"Z, if you pop these stitches before I'm even done with them, I'll knock you out," Shisui threatened.

Itachi's eyes swirled crimson, watching the entrance with a half-lidded stare. "He is not alone."

A boy the same age as Haku, with blue-black hair falling over his eyes and a metal cuff around one wrist, stumbled into the chamber, dragged by Michishio's iron grip on his upper arm. The Hanran captain's other hand rested on the nape of an even younger girl's neck, propelling her forward. Her hair was a burnished orange, falling past her shoulders, and she like the boy wore plain clothing and a shackle on her wrist. Haku watched them without comprehension.

"Shit," Shisui breathed, stunned. "The Rishiri kids. They're too young. No, they're too _old."_

"No," said the captain grimly, tracking their progress. "They're not."

"Mei's taking a gamble so she'll have a fighting jinchuuriki quickly," Zabuza growled. "Worked on Yagura. Worked on that - "

"They will have spares waiting in the wings, in case these two are not compatible," Itachi noted, passing Haku a clean needle and a cloth to tie around his arm and nudging him to his feet. "The two younger ones we recovered."

"Shit," Shisui snarled, though his hands stayed steady.

"Someone else would have been chosen, if they were not," the captain said quietly - regretfully. A few quick movements and a sharp prick in the crook of Haku's elbow, and the captain was pressing a bandage against his own arm as blood flowed through the tube from Haku to Zabuza.

"Yeah," Zabuza grunted. "These guys just have a better chance of not dying. Boy's probably descended from the Rokubi's first jinchuuriki by the looks of him, and the girl's a half-blood from Uzushio."

"Yeah," echoed Shisui. But Haku could read his silence well enough, and it said, _if these two die, that's on me. If one of them becomes the jinchuuriki, that's on me._ Everyone else - Itachi and Zabuza and the captain - politely pretended not to see, because there was nothing that could be done about it.

"Let's get this over quick," Zabuza muttered, gesturing limply with his free arm. "I don't wanna be on my back when the Sanbi breaks out."

"You don't ever want to be on your back," Shisui said under his breath. "But here you are anyways."

Shisui was probably the only one who could say that and not immediately become the target of a spirited murder attempt, and only because Zabuza was uncomfortably close to death himself. "So help me gods, Konoha," Zabuza hissed. "I will disembowel you and feed your guts to the sharks."

"You always say the sweetest things," Shisui said, pausing with his sutures to pat Zabuza's head. Zabuza slapped his hand away.

"Behave," the captain said absently, dropping down next to Zabuza and letting his head fall back against the wall.

Shisui tied off the last of his stitches, slapping a bandage and some tape over top of it. Haku refilled his ice cup and passed it back to Zabuza, who took it with a grunt. Itachi's eyes, now dark, half-lidded, though they flicked back and forth watchfully.

Chakra flared up suddenly, a massive _whoosh_ of yellow-gold on the far side of the dias. Haku's head snapped to the side to see a second and third plume, even both even bigger than the first, force back the darkness as two more seals activated simultaneously.

"Okay, that's enough out of you," the captain murmured, suddenly at Haku's side. He slid out the IV needle with a deft movement and pressed a piece of gauze against the crook of Haku's arm where it had come out. "Hold that." Haku obeyed automatically.

"Take it out of me," Zabuza growled with the barest edge of apprehension, struggling upright as the seal-chakra surged. Then, "Shut _up,_ Konoha."

"Did you hear me say anything?" Shisui drawled, plucking the needle and tubing from Zabuza's arm and replacing it with a bandage.

"Quiet," the captain ordered, shoving loose pieces back into his med kit with movements Haku would have called frantic on anybody else. "Status check, all of you."

"Mild concussion," Itachi reported, "but functional. Multiple cracked ribs. Chakra levels...twelve percent." He looked to Zabuza expectantly.

"I'm fine," Zabuza said automatically.

"Momochi," said the captain.

Zabuza rolled his eyes. "Three major injuries, all life-threatening, all of them you patched up, plus bruised ribs, chakra levels fifteen-twenty percent."

Shisui patted himself up and down. "Two stab wounds with moderate bleeding, other than that, minor injuries only," he said. "Chakra is twenty-five percent."

"Minor injuries only," Haku echoed. "My chakra is at forty-five percent."

"Good," said the captain. "Get ready to move."

"And yourself, Taichou?" Itachi asked pointedly, if politely.

The captain paused, and for a moment Haku thought he wouldn't answer. "Fractured humerus, bruising, damaged knee, possibly internal bleeding. Minor head injury. Chakra at eight percent. Haku, if there's an attack, you're first defense." He nodded at Shisui. "You're second."

"Did you fucking bluff Mei with _eight percent chakra?"_ Zabuza hissed.

"Shit, Taichou," said Shisui. "You need ten percent just to walk around. How are you still upright? And put a brace on that knee for gods' sake."

"Great effort," said the captain. "Chakra pills exist. If something does happen, we leave. Fast."

Haku pushed off from the wall, rocking onto the balls of his feet. Shisui shuffled from his seated position into a low crouch. The others, in deference to their varying levels of dangerously low chakra, stayed sitting. The captain grudgingly swathed his knee in bandages.

On the far side of the dias, Maiko's chakra burned brightest, vivid blue twining with all three seals. One by one, the chakra signatures of the other Hanran shinobi joined in at the edges of the seals, bolstering the boundaries.

With a ferocious rush, the Sanbi's chakra roared out, a red-black wave that dwarfed the tiny blips of the shinobi. The sakki hit seconds later, heady and heavy and overwhelming, and it shoved Haku's breath back down his throat as his legs went weak beneath him.

"Steady, kid," Zabuza growled, as Itachi caught Haku by the shoulder and propped him up.

"Sorry, Zabuza-san, Itachi-san," Haku said breathlessly, pushing himself upright against the wall with a trembling hand.

The Sanbi screeched its fury and defiance as the yellow-gold chakra net of the containment seal snaked up and around its shell, dragging it down when it reared up. But the beast's struggles were weak; even more than of the shinobi holding it back, it had spent itself in the previous battle already, and Maiko's seals were strong. Maiko shouted something, inaudible beneath the Sanbi's shrieks, and a high, agonized scream joined the chorus. The brilliant yellow-gold of the seal chakra melted into a deep orange. The chakra net flared bright and constricted, and the Sanbi's chakra bulged around the ropes of the net as it jerked its entire body back and forth.

Shisui's teeth ground together audibly as the scream continued, raw and tortured and terrified. His fist clenched and loosened again at his side.

Maiko's chakra blazed, the net burned white, and between one moment and the next, the Sanbi vanished mid-roar. The scream cut off abruptly, leaving behind a ringing silence.

The glow of the seals remained, but the sealing team's chakra each faded to a muted glimmer. Haku could still feel the Sanbi's chakra, but rather than a blazing inferno, just a suggestion of flame. He breathed, and he could feel the rise and fall of his chest once more.

Itachi frowned, tilting his head.

"The second one, start the second seal!" Ao shouted.

Haku flinched as the Sanbi's chakra exploded back into the stagnant air. It seethed against the nets that sprang up to snare it once more, and Haku caught a glimpse of a furious golden eye before the chakra cords wrenched its head to the side. It bellowed its hatred, and the force of its rage shook the air.

Maiko barked hoarse orders at the sealing team, even as her chakra rose to meet the Bijuu. She had to have taken chakra pills like sweets, but the net frayed despite her best efforts. The demon turtle's mouth snapped shut on a length of the net and ripped it wide open; it shrieked its triumph and forced its head through the gap in the seal. Mei's chakra blazed as tendrils of lava snaked up to encircle the Sanbi's shell and drag it back.

"Right, time to go," the captain decided, and Haku jumped at the abruptness of his voice in his ear. "This is officially not worth it. Either they seal it in a stable jinchuuriki or they keep it sealed long enough to kill it. Juu, take point. Haku, rearguard. Get us out of here."

"We waited all this time," Zabuza groused.

"Yeah, to keep you alive," muttered Shisui, whisking around the corner. "Clear."

Itachi inserted himself neatly under Zabuza's arm without a word when the taller man tilted dangerously, and the captain pushed upright, ambling after Shisui as if he had time and energy still for leisure.

Haku let his ice curl around his hands and watched his team's back.

Kirigakure was on fire. But as Sasuke liked to say when he inevitably lit something on fire, 'just a little.'

"What the fuck," said Zabuza, as the team surveyed the burning buildings. He sagged a little more on Itachi, who made no complaint, just shifted to accommodate Zabuza.

It was not the most reassuring first sight as they emerged from the underground. A whole squadron of Hanran shinobi sprinted past without recognition of the bedraggled assault team. Ten seconds later, a squad of Hana-ha shinobi did the same above them, darting from rooftop to rooftop.

"Juu," said the captain, his voice just a little strained.

"Hai." Shisui leapt up the Mizukage Tower, ricocheting off the side of the building to intercept the team. He grabbed the nearest man by the arm, batting aside the shinobi's wild kunai easily and pulling him into a loose headlock when he went for another. "Sitrep, chuunin," he ordered. "What's going on?"

The rest of the man's squadron wheeled to gather in a loose formation surrounding Shisui, who turned neatly to keep them getting behind him. "Good effort, but stand down. Sitrep," he repeated, giving the chuunin a little shake.

The chuunin glanced between Shisui - who was wearing a mask completely coated in drying blood and absolutely nothing to suggest he was in fact a Hana-ha captain - and the rest of his squadron a little wildly.

The captain showed mercy to the beleaguered shinobi by calling up, "Hey." The squadron all turned as one, even the chuunin Shisui was still holding, to see the captain in his distinctive one-eye-scorched cat-mask and commander's armband staring back up at them. "Answer the captain. Some time today, if you don't mind." Perhaps it would be a good idea to give all the captains armbands, or even the all the ranking shinobi, as Kiri did.

"Oh, shit," muttered the senior genin. "I, uh - we - sir, Captain? Commander!"

"Shut up, Makura," the chuunin snapped, looking like he wanted nothing more than to pinch the bridge of his nose. Shisui let him go with an absent pat on the shoulder, and the chuunin did exactly that. "Sorry, sir. The loyalists mounted an attack about an hour after the Mizukage Assassination Team went in, I'm guessing because most of the Hanran Command took part. Commander Nara coordinated the defense and counterattack, but some of the buildings ended up as collateral."

"Some," Shisui repeated. He deliberately did not look at the flames licking over a rather large percentage of the inner Village. "Where are you assigned? What's the threat level?"

"We've been rerouted to guard the teams putting out the fires," the chuunin explained. "Threat level low. We were told there aren't any known active enemy combatants."

"So it's not a battlefield, it's just on fire," said Shisui. "Right. On your way."

"Sir," said the chuunin, saluting both Shisui and the rest of the assassination team.

Shisui dropped back down off the building as the chuunin rounded up the rest of his squad. He stretched languidly. "Threat level's low, so I propose that we head straight to Medical."

"Go ahead," said the captain. "I need to check in with Nara and Command."

Shisui and Itachi exchanged glances. "Yeah, I got this," said Shisui. "You go on."

"Nah, we can wait," Zabuza said. "I wanna watch. Hey!" he sputtered, as Itachi dragged him away bodily.

"If you cannot stop me, you do not have a choice," said Itachi serenely.

"I can't stop you even if I'm not burned to shit, you psychedelic freak!" Zabuza growled.

"Yes," said Itachi.

Haku wavered. His place was at Zabuza's side, but Zabuza was in Itachi's hands and therefore as good as in the hospital tent already - and Shisui might need backup with the captain. He settled for turning so he could keep both Shisui and the captain, and Zabuza and Itachi, in his field of view.

"Hey, Taichou," Shisui said conversationally, his hand landing heavily on the captain's uninjured shoulder. "You're probably at about five percent of your chakra levels right now, which means that if I shove you, you'll fall, and if you fall, you'll pass out in the middle of this street, and if you pass out in the middle of this street, it'll be bad for morale." He brought his bloodied mask in close to the captain's. "If you don't agree to come to Medical right now, I'm going to shove you."

The captain glared. "That's treason."

"You're not my Kage."

"Insubordination."

"I'll take my chances with the disciplinary action."

" _Rude."_

Shisui shrugged. "So I'm an asshole. Not a crime."

Shisui waited. The captain tried to pretend he wasn't wobbling on his feet.

"Command - " the captain started.

" - can take my report after I get you to the medics," Shisui interrupted. "Last I checked, I was still a captain."

"I'm demoting you," said the captain.

"Uh huh," said Shisui. "Do you need to lean on Haku-kun?"

A pause. "Yes," the captain said begrudgingly.

Haku was short enough that the captain's hand on his shoulder could still look like the captain was guiding him, instead of Haku taking on a large portion of the captain's body weight. Fortunately, the captain weighed far less than Zabuza, who Haku had carried on more than one occasion.

Shisui pushed into the hospital tent first, and the frenzied activity stilled abruptly. The captain took his hand off Haku's shoulder, stalking the rest of the way inside under his own power. Haku pulled off his mask and his haori and bundled them together, waited six seconds, then slipped in after them.

His entrance was not noted. The medic-nin had recovered their composure after the initial surprise, but the other shinobi - the patients - watched Shisui and the captain unabashedly. Shisui's mask and armour were liberally doused in blood. That and his hunting cat's grace cleared a path for the captain, who followed more slowly in his wake. Shizune stormed out to meet them, an assistant on either flank and her white medic's haori flying about her. "Kurumi, help the commander. Kuri, get the captain. Everybody else, if you can move, get out of the way!"

The captain might have been the highest ranking shinobi in the room but this was Shizune's domain, and by Haku's generous estimate, the captain probably had about ten seconds before he collapsed, so he allowed the medic-nin to whisk him to a curtained room at the very back of the tent without a fuss. Carefully, Haku ducked his head, meandering through the rows of pallets as he worked his way back just fast enough to appear to have a purpose, but slow enough not to attract attention.

Footsteps approached, and Haku turned away smoothly, reaching down to snag an almost-spent roll of bandage from an iryou-nin's supply basket while the man was bent over his patient. His shoulders stayed loose as the footsteps neared, right up until the cloth dropped onto his head. He stiffened instinctively before forcing himself to relax.

"Keep that on and come with me," Shizune murmured as he peeked up. She had donned a white bandana over her hair and a thin cloth mask since he last saw her, and she turned to walk briskly away without waiting for a response.

Haku tugged the medic haori around himself properly and hurried after her.

The back of the tent was partitioned off into a hallway from which individual rooms afforded their occupants space and privacy. As Shizune whisked Haku into the second, a glance into the first as an iryou-nin darted out revealed Itachi, lying still on a pallet as another medic cupped green chakra at his ribs.

Zabuza lay on the cot in the center of the room with his eyes closed and his skin with a waxy pallor more noticeable now, aboveground, than it had been in the firelit chamber. Two IV tubes snaked fluid into his arms, one blood, and one clear. His armour and shirt had been stripped off and a cloth drawn up to his chest so that only the tops of the scar showed. The fabric at his midriff was slowly being stained crimson. The red-black burns mottling his arms crept up his shoulders to the sides of his neck, where the Sanbi's chakra had scorched under Zabuza's armour. Haku's step stuttered.

"We've put him under for surgery," Shizune said, pulling the curtain shut behind them. "Tie your hair back, put on a mask, and stay out of our way." She nodded at the other medic in the room, who didn't look up from her examination of Zabuza's arm. "Rakkasei, keep an eye on his body temperature."

"Aa, I know," Rakkasei said distractedly.

"Thank you, Shizune-sensei," said Haku, and tucked himself in the back corner as he scrambled to put his hair up.

"Better I know where you are than have you skulking around making my medics paranoid," she answered, but her mind was clearly elsewhere. "Doubt you'd sit back and wait with the others."

The others - Haku realized with some chagrin that he hadn't even thought about the refugee children. He bit down the urge to ask about them, because Shizune was already hovering over Zabuza. "Oxygen is on the low side but stable," she murmured. "Blood pressure low, pulse fast."

"How far are we going on him today?" Rakkasei said tersely. She flicked back the sheet for just a moment to check on the slash. "This is a patch job. The muscle here is torn to hell, and whatever blade did that caught the intestines."

"Fighting fit," Shizune said. "Work on that. I'll start on the burns. Everything else can wait." Her chakra, even next to the other medic-nin, glowed bright and strong as she concentrated it to a single finger. The color flicked from green to blue in the blink of an eye, and Haku stiffened, clutching his arms around himself. "Do you know what I'm doing?" she asked without looking up.

Rakkasei ignored her. Haku hesitated before saying, "Removing the dead tissue?"

"Correct," said Shizune, warm approval in her voice. "Why?"

The sum of Haku's knowledge of this subject was snatches of Shisui and Zabuza arguing in the sealing cavern. "The dead flesh will...eat...the healthy flesh." Haku's voice trailed off hesitantly.

"She's not exactly wrong," the other medic-nin said absently, dabbing away blood as she sliced through Shisui's field sutures with a metal scalpel.

Shizune's hands held steady as she cut into Zabuza's arm. Haku forced himself to watch. "Flesh is made of - well, different parts, like muscle, tendons, and skin, and those are made up of even smaller parts called cells. When those cells die, sometimes they send signals that cause nearby cells to die. It's not a lot normally, but when there are too many dead cells like in a burn this big, it can spread very rapidly."

"What do you do after you take out all the dead cells?" Haku asked tentatively, voice hushed to keep from disturbing her work.

"We bring in healthy cells from a different part of the body," said Shizune, "and grow them together where the dead tissue was so that it all heals in one piece."

That sounded very bizarre, but Haku couldn't find any fault in her logic. "Do you do this a lot?"

Rakkasei huffed a dry laugh. "Shinobi from the Land of Fire really like katon."

"It does tend to be one of the more common types of wounds we treat," Shizune agreed. "Usually not so deep or severe, but we've seen worse, and Zabuza is tougher than most. I was informed that he survived a field surgery in Tetsu by two of his team."

"Ah. Yes," said Haku, wincing delicately at the memory.

"What, were they chuunin-level iryou-nin or something?" Rakkasei ran a handful of dim green chakra over the wound as she set down her scalpel.

Shizune's eyes crinkled in a smile. "Ex-Anbu combat jounin, actually," she said. "One picked up basic healing from an iryou-nin teammate, and the other shadowed me for about four months during a long convalescence."

"I'm sorry, what?" Rakkasei asked, incredulity lilting her voice. "Field surgery takes seven years, minimum, to learn. Trauma surgery is nine. How did they not kill this man?"

"Zabuza-san is very durable," Haku offered.

"His teammates have unique skillsets," Shizune added. "They're very intuitive learners. It's a pity they don't have the chakra control or the intention of specializing in medicine."

"They don't have the chakra control?" demanded Rakkasei, aghast.

"The commander does, actually," Shizune said thoughtfully. "But I don't think he'd done anything bigger than closing up an external laceration before that. Juu could do precision work, but he burns off a lot of chakra."

"Do you mean to tell me that _Commander Hatake_ and _the captain of the Covert Intelligence Unit_ did that surgery?"

"As Haku-kun said." Shizune patted Zabuza's hair. "Zabuza is very durable."

Rakkasei shook her head in disbelief. The room lapsed back into quiet. Haku could hear the activity from the rooms on either side: the captain most immediately needed a chakra transfusion and surgery to repair his knee; Itachi needed his ribs knit back together and to stay awake because of his concussion; Shisui escaped against medical advice to deliver his report to the rest of Command, with the promise that he would return immediately after he finished. Shizune's hands drifted deftly from Zabuza's arm to a small metal bowl, into which she dropped chunks of scorched skin that looked uncomfortably like charred pork.

"Temperature dropping," Rakkasei interrupted the silence. "Still within normal parameters, gradual descent. I'm keeping an eye on it."

Shizune hummed acknowledgement, taking a moment to feel the pulse in Zabuza's throat. "For burns, especially deep ones or those covering a large area, it's important to watch for a sudden drop in body temperature or spike in heart rate," she explained. "Do you know why?"

Haku thought back to the bits and pieces he picked up with the hunter-nin or from watching Shisui. "Those are signs of the body going into shock, and that's another set of problems to worry about?"

"Right again," said Shizune. "Shock is extremely dangerous, especially after - "

"Shit!" snapped Rakkasei, slapping glowing hands down flat against Zabuza's side. "Body temperature just nosedived. Kid, run and fetch another blanket." Haku startled and checked over his shoulder reflexively. "Yes, you!" Rakkasei barked. "You see another kid in here?"

"Hai!" Haku said, pushing to his feet hurriedly.

"Make that two blankets," Shizune called after him.

Zabuza would be rather offended to know that Haku worried about him almost constantly. After all, Zabuza had survived a traditional Academy graduation as a five-year-old, eighteen years in Mizu's cutthroat shinobi ranks, experimentation by one of Konoha's Sannin, and two separate attempts to kill him by the Mizukage. That didn't stop Haku from hovering anxiously outside the entrance of the hospital tent once Shizune gently but firmly banished him from Zabuza's room with instructions to get himself a meal and some rest.

"Hey."

Haku jumped. Perhaps it was inexcusable, but Haku blamed his worry and exhaustion on his failure to hear Temari's approach. He turned, forcing his usual grace and mostly failing to make the movement smooth. Temari wasn't wearing her furred cloak, just a plain dark shirt and pants. There was soot in her hair and white bandage peeking through a tear in her sleeve. She tucked her hands in her pockets and gave him a tired smile. "Juu-sensei dropped by and told us what happened. How's Zabuza-sensei?"

"Ah," said Haku, spotting Neji skulking around the far corner of the nearest tent, his bandana tucked down flush against the top of his wraparounds. "He went into shock earlier but he's stable now. I'm afraid I lost track of Juu-san. Where is he now?"

The corner of Temari's mouth quirked. "Shizune-sensei sent one of the iryou-nin to track him down after he didn't show up at the hospital tent. He went back to Command after he made sure we were all in one piece, but my guess is he'll be here soon enough."

"And the others?"

"We had to abandon camp because our tree burned down," Temari explained. "Well. Sasuke burned it down. After we got attacked."

"Ah," said Haku somewhat weakly.

"Don't worry," Temari assured him. "We have a new camp, and I left Sai in charge. Everyone's fine. In one piece, at least." She eyed him keenly. "When's the last time you slept?"

Haku hesitated. "I napped for a couple hours in the tunnels before the assault on the Mizukage," he said. He wasn't sure how long ago that was. "How long were we gone?"

"Twenty-six hours," answered Temari briskly, but she was watching him closely.

Haku almost forgot to breathe. "Twenty six hours?" That couldn't be. Could it? That they had spent over a day in the catacombs, and in that last battle in the lowest cavern in Kirigakure. The darkness had eaten all sense of time, all sense of anything except the mission.

"You need to rest." Temari's tone softened. "Two hours isn't enough to keep you on your feet."

Haku was too tired to hide the way his eyes drifted back towards the hospital tent. Zabuza was at his most vulnerable now, unconscious and in an open, undefended location with high traffic. Were Haku an assassin, he would strike now.

"We will keep watch." That was Neji, slinking along the side of the tent.

It wasn't that Haku didn't trust Neji or Temari - it was just that they were children. He was well aware of the irony in that thought, but Haku had been guarding and killing for Zabuza for over five years. Still, Haku's strength was rapidly draining. "I don't want to go far," he said.

Temari's eyes flickered sideways to Neji, who turned his head slightly. "We won't," said Temari. "We'll stay in range - just out of sight."

That - and Neji's ability to see through walls - appeased Haku's lingering paranoia. Haku was not of a clan, but he did know the old traditions. "I entrust his safety to you," he said to Temari, but his words were for Neji. Temari frowned, because she too knew the words even if she did not understand their weight.

Neji's spine straightened, and his chin lifted. "On my honor, your trust is not misplaced," he said.

Haku awoke from his light doze with Temari's hand on his shoulder. His eyes flashed open, and though he didn't sit up, he drew his chakra to him as subtly as he could manage.

"No danger," Temari murmured. "Zabuza-sensei is fine, still asleep. You slept for six hours."

"It is the remainder of the Mizukage Assassination Team," Neji said, his voice just as low. "Terumi Mei has returned to the surface."

Haku let his grip on his chakra fade and accepted Temari's arm to haul himself upright. "Is there a child with them?"

"Two," Neji confirmed, kneeling at the edge of their roof. "One is unconscious. One is dead." His tone remained even and matter-of-fact from beginning to end.

Haku swallowed. His voice did not quaver when he asked, "Is it the girl who lives or the boy?"

Temari's head turned towards him, and on the other side, Neji did the same, a pointed gesture because he did not need to face Haku to see him. "The girl lives," Neji said.

Haku huffed a quiet breath out, grief and relief at the same time. "She is the new jinchuuriki of the Sanbi," he said.

Neji twitched. Temari leaned forward for a better look. "She looks nine or ten," she noted thoughtfully. "Do you know her?"

"No. I wasn't born in Kirigakure," Haku reminded them. "Zabuza-san brought me here. I didn't get the chance to meet a lot of the other children."

Temari picked up the careless statement the way most of the rest of the children wouldn't have. "Zabuza-sensei didn't let you near the other children," she stated, eyes shrewd. She made no attempt to hide her disapproval - mixed accusation and reproach.

"No," Haku agreed evenly, masking his own flare of temper. "You don't understand Kiri. It was a good thing that Zabuza-san kept me close, especially since I was all but defenceless when I first arrived. There are rules here and I didn't know them, and because of those rules, children grow up quickly. They learn to be cruel young."

This, too, was something Neji knew better than Temari. Temari grew up privileged in the upper echelons of Suna; her grievances with the constraints her Village's society pressed on her paled in comparison to those of they who were born as second- and third-class citizens.

"Who else is still in Medical?" Haku asked, a clumsy pivot in the conversation. He had no desire to linger on the current topic.

"Only the captain and Zabuza-sensei remain for treatment," Neji answered. "Itachi-sensei and Shisui-sensei have gone back to Command."

"We can go down to see if Shizune-sensei will let us visit," Temari offered. "But I thought you might want to find something to eat first."

Haku's stomach ached, abruptly reminded him that it had been a day and a half since he had eaten anything substantial. He wavered. Six hours asleep meant six hours away from Zabuza - already, that was too long. He stayed silent too long - Neji shifted on his feet impatiently.

"I'll bring you something. You and Ni go down, check on Zabuza-sensei and the captain," Temari suggested, and her smile was razor sharp when she added, "There're a lot of potential targets in that hospital tent for the guards to cover, especially in the middle of Kirigakure. Now that the war's over, we're the enemy, and the captain is the biggest threat on our side."

"I will see them coming," Neji said, once again.

"Aa," Haku agreed, both relieved and concerned. "Thank you."

They slipped in through the main entrance. The chuunin leaning inconspicuously against a nearby tree gave them a narrow-eyed stare but jerked his head to motion them in. Haku still wore the haori Shizune had given him, to mark him as one who belonged, and it was large enough to wrap about himself like a robe. There was another guard - visible guard, at least - just before the private wing, dressed as a medic-nin, taking inventory of supplies. Haku imagined he must have taken inventory over and over and over in the past hours.

Hand signals too fleeting for Haku to make out bounced around the room, and a man with scars raking down one side of his face melted out of the shadows and blocked their path when they approached the back hallway. "Think you kids got a little turned around in here," he said, and his smile stretched and distorted his scars. Around them, the bustle of the hospital tent continued uninterrupted.

"I don't believe we have," Haku said politely, inconspicuously leaning around him.

The shinobi stopped smiling, shifting slightly to cut off Haku's line of sight. "Look, kid," he said, his face smoothing over into a blank mask that was more frightening than if he had scowled. "This area is restricted. Turn around."

Neji tilted his head up at Haku, a silent question. Haku frowned, torn, and shuffled on his feet.

Fortunately, the captain poked his head out of the gap between the tent walls. "They're fine, Touitsu," he said, somewhat between an order and a drawl. He had one arm in a sling, a brace wrapped around his knee, and the air of one doing exactly what they wanted to be doing. The last part was clearly false, despite everything Haku sensed from him, because everyone who had been in the forests of Tetsu knew that the captain hated being at the mercy of the medics. "They're with the Communications Unit."

"Commander," a half-harried, half-exasperated voice carried from beyond the tent wall. The captain blinked once, slowly. "Hatake-taishou, please come back. If you will not lie down, at least sit."

"Genin, with me," the captain said, and retreated.

Touitsu gave them one last careful glance before stepping aside to let them pass.

The captain waited in the hallway as the tent flap dropped behind Haku and Neji. "I have been informed that I have damaged too many organs to be allowed to leave," he said without inflection.

"They work, but they're delicate," said Shizune, emerging from one room and striding purposefully towards the main room. "Which is why Kurumi told you to sit, Kakashi."

"I'm going," said the captain. "Kids, I assume you're here to see Zabuza."

"Hai," said Haku, a little embarrassed both at his transparency and the implicit admittance that they had not come to see the captain.

"Me too," the captain said unconcernedly. "This way."

Zabuza's intravenous tubes were still in place, the bags of fluids replaced, but he was awake and propped up on a stack of pillows with a glower on his face. "Kid," he growled. "That was sloppy. If they stop you, they've seen you. If they see you, they can recognize you. You didn't even have a godsdamned cover story."

Haku ducked his head sheepishly. "I apologize," he said. "I was careless."

The captain sank down onto the bench at the side of the room. "It's a good thing they didn't," he said, tilting his head to fix one dark eye on Haku and Neji. "If the guards could tell they were lying, the Anbu would have swept them straight to interrogation before I could intervene."

Neji stiffened, trading an alarmed glance with Haku. "Anbu," Haku echoed. "How many were there outside?"

"Four," the captain answered blithely. "Three for me and one for this invalid."

"Fuck off," Zabuza snarled, hand twitching automatically for the battered broadsword leaning against the tent wall.

Four Anbu guards. Four Anbu, and Haku had not spotted them - or had not taken the time to spot them. The weight of his negligence lurked at the edge of his mind..

But Zabuza's eyes - quite clouded from the drugs Shizune must have pumped into him while he was unable to protest - drifted past him and landed on Neji. "Punk," Zabuza muttered.

Neji ducked his head in an abbreviated bow, his expression caught somewhere between annoyance and relief. "It is good that you are recovering, Sensei," he said stiffly.

"Uh huh," said Zabuza, regarding him from his mess of pillows. "You keep an eye on that pack of hellions out there? Stay out of fights?"

Neji paused. He swallowed. "We became...involved...in several minor skirmishes, but we did not seek them out."

"Of course you did," Zabuza said under his breath, rolling his eyes.

"Message for Momochi-taichou from Juu-taichou." Temari's voice drifted through the canvas walls. "And Momochi-taichou asked for food to be delivered because he was 'fucking tired of bland medical sludge.'"

"See," said Zabuza pointedly. "That's a cover story."

On any other day, Haku could have stemmed the avalanche of resentment, but he was still burned out in both mind and body from the nonstop battles of the past days. Something dark twisted in Haku's chest, and the unwelcome tang of bitterness burned in the back of his mouth. Haku might have been Zabuza's apprentice, but he saw the way he looked at Temari. She was far more like Zabuza than Haku was - she wore her confidence for all to see, had a fondness for oversized weaponry and straightforward combat, and indulged in the same ruthlessness. Zabuza had put in far too much time and effort into honing Haku to discard him now before his purpose was served, but in another life, he would have taken Temari as his apprentice instead.

Haku was very good at hiding what he felt to all save Zabuza, though even if Temari knew, she wouldn't understand, or even care - the Konohans and Suna-born ascribed no importance to apprenticeship or caste, only rank. But Haku's apprenticeship to Zabuza was his purpose, his saving grace, and it made him desperate, and he loved it and hated it and needed it in the same breath.

Zabuza was not so far gone to miss Haku's reaction, but perhaps just enough for his cruelty to surface. His eyes sharpened and locked onto Haku's face. "There's no place for mistakes," he drawled.

Mistakes. Mistake. That was aimed to draw blood, an attack and a warning Zabuza knew would cut deep at Haku's vulnerabilities. It said _don't forget_ and _watch yourself_ and _no more failures_ and _don't show your weakness_ and _you can be replaced._

But Haku knew all this already. He lifted his chin just a little and held Zabuza's eyes steadily until the captain broke their eye contact by standing for no discernible purpose and sauntering forwards. "Rei-chan. Does Juu know that you are misusing his credentials?"

Had anyone except the captain addressed her as such, Temari would have answered with a coy smile, but even Temari had a reasonably healthy fear of the captain. "I thought that using Juu-sensei's name would be the safest way to get in here, sir," she said. "He would vouch for me if something went wrong."

The captain studied her carefully. He turned to sit back down. "Careful with Zabuza," he said offhandedly. "If he moves too abruptly he'll need a replacement spleen."

"Oh, fuck you, Hatake," Zabuza snapped. "You're just as fucked up as I am."

"You're the one in the bed," the captain pointed out. "I had some internal bleeding. You came here with your right kidney in two pieces."

Haku couldn't stop the squeak from escaping. Zabuza rolled his eyes. "The yuki-onna put it back together, didn't she?"

"You're lucky Shizune-sensei's busy and doesn't have time to dismember you, Sensei," Temari told him. "Here, Ichi." She passed him her tray, laden with two metal ration bowls. "But it's from the mess, so don't get your hopes up."

"Aa. Thank you," said Haku, taking the tray gratefully. One bowl held rice, the second some form of stew. Neji glanced over and immediately grimaced, but Haku was too hungry to care much beyond that it was food and edible.

Shisui's chakra flickered just outside the room, the slither of smoke and crackling sparks. He slid in through the flaps of the tent, and his spotted leopard-mask had been wiped clean of its coat of blood save the stubborn traces embedded in the porcelain grooves. Itachi padded in after him, the canvas not so much as touching the tips of his hair as it dropped back into place behind him.

"Meetings are terrible and whoever invented them should be beheaded," Shisui complained, slinking up onto the edge of Zabuza's bed. "Hey, kids."

"The hell do you think you're doing?" Zabuza growled.

"Shh," murmured Shisui absently.

Itachi remained standing, and his eyes whirled red for a moment as he checked back out into the hall. He touched a chakra-laden finger to the seal plastered on the ceiling, enveloping them into their own bubble of silence. "Preparations have been made for the Hanabi-ha troops for semi-permanent accommodations," he reported, his words directed towards the captain. "Some of our shinobi will still have to stay in tents until buildings are cleared and repaired, or other arrangements can be made. We have been given the old Academy to house the majority of our units, which was abandoned when new facilities were built."

Haku flinched, his chakra crackling icy fingers up his spine instinctively. Zabuza choked out, "They gave us _what?"_

"I know it's not ideal," said Shisui, observing their reactions curiously. "But it's the only building big enough to house that many of Hana-ha in one place."

"Yeah, do you know why it's not ideal?" Zabuza hissed. "They didn't close it _because_ they got new buildings. They closed it because I killed over a hundred kids down there and no matter how hard they scrubbed the floors, the blood wouldn't come out. Because Academy students and shinobi alike could taste the fucking, I don't know, despair and terror that still infects the place, and seven kids and two teachers committed suicide within the week. Mei gave you the fucking Old Academy because no Kiri shinobi would dare spend a night inside, let alone live there."

Temari's eyes were wide. Neji stood next to her, very still. Itachi and the captain communicated by staring at each other silently.

"At least we know they won't try to take it back," Shisui said, voice dry.

"Send a team to scout it out," the captain said. "It's been almost twenty years; whatever effects may have worn off."

"I'll go," volunteered Shisui immediately.

"I will as well," said Itachi. "You may need backup."

Shisui wrinkled his nose. "Two captains is overkill, even if there're a couple of loyalists hiding out in there - at worst, it's a bunch of ghosts. I'm not going to commit suicide, cousin."

"We'll go," Temari volunteered, her dark eyes bright but serious. Shisui frowned, but she added, "you'll need a guide, and Ichi knows the way around."

"I can take you there," Haku agreed, despite the chill lingering at the back of his neck. "I've been in the Academy before, briefly." In the daytime, and only for a few hours. The Old Academy was haunting, both in its size and its history, and the entire time he had been inside Haku either felt or imagined an invisible predator shadowing his footsteps.

Zabuza narrowed his eyes at them - at Haku. "Take 'em all," he said at last. "Blood-eyes here and the whelps. You'll need Haku. And the white-eyes, if he really can see everything."

"I can," said Neji, maybe a little too eagerly.

Another round of silent glances. The captain nodded once. "Do it," he said.

"Don't take any chances," Shisui said, turning to fix first Haku with a hard stare, then Neji and Temari in turn. "You have so much as a weird feeling, you let one of us know and get out of there fast. Do you understand?"

"Hai," said Haku, echoed by Neji. Temari nodded her acknowledgement.

"You can't all go there together," the captain warned. "Too conspicuous. Team Suzaku shouldn't be seen with you two."

"Shisui and I will skirt the edges of the training grounds," Itachi said. "Team Suzaku can - "

"They can go straight through the Village," Zabuza interrupted, and his smile had too many teeth. "They won't be stopped if Haku's with 'em."

"Straight through the Village," Haku agreed.

The fires in the Village had all been put out in the night while Haku slept. The last curls of smoke still trailed into the sky, dark against the blue of the sky. Haku inhaled crisp mountain air infused with ash and tried not to grimace. "Let me take the lead," he said. "Stay behind me and don't speak, even if anyone addresses you. I'll take care of it."

Temari studied his face, her eyes dark and searching. When it had been just the refugee children, Temari had been the undisputed leader of the pack, the oldest and most shinobi-like. Even now, when Zabuza or the captain or the Uchiha cousins were away on missions or otherwise, supervision and command fell to Temari. Haku was not usually around at those times because he accompanied Zabuza on nearly all his missions, but even when he was, he had not challenged Temari's authority. "What are we walking into?" she asked at last.

Haku felt his expression smooth. "Kiri is built on strength," he recited. "Age, rank, caste - everyone has a place in the hierarchy, and if you don't know the rules to how it works, the consequences can be - " he hesitated, images of whipping posts and bodies hung like flags echoing though his mind, " - brutal. The control of one higher than you is checked only by the power of one higher on the ladder. Without an umbrella of protection - from a clan, a sensei, a handler, a team leader who actually cares about you - you won't last very long."

Neji's revulsion painted itself across his face before he, too, wrestled his emotions under control. "Zabuza-sensei was one of the Seven Swordsmen. He is your shield."

"He is," Haku said. "And as his apprentice, I'll be yours."

Temari pursed her lips. "We'll follow your lead," she said, with a glance at Neji, who nodded shortly.

"Don't show any weakness," Haku warned. "No fear, no aggression, no emotions. Don't meet anyone's eyes and don't stare. That will make you a target and I imagine now more than ever, someone will be looking for an excuse to put someone else in their place." He took a deep breath, and the acrid wood-burn smoke burned his lungs. "Let's go."

Accessing the Old Academy meant passing through the main bulk of the Inner Village to the northeast side of the town. Haku smoothed down the front of his old, green-blue haori, rolled his shoulders to loosen and stretch his muscles, and strode forward with more confidence than he felt. The Inner Village had not seen much fighting compared to the Lower City, but here too the paving stones were cracked and broken, the roads treacherous with loose stones and debris. Soft ash like snow fluttered down from the sky, landing in his hair and eyelashes, and Haku tugged the neck of his turtleneck up to cover his mouth and nose.

Haku turned the corner and broken glass crunched under his sandal. On one side of the street was a bombed-out restaurant, scorched and ransacked until it was little more than a roof and four walls. A teen in worn standard Kiri greys and a senior genin's light blue armband lounged in the bare windowsill, turning a kunai over and over in his hand. He kept one eye on the outside, and in particular the loyalist teams lounging on the opposite side of the street, as the rest of his squad made camp within.

The loyalist sentry genin leered at Haku as Team Suzaku passed, arrogance and disdain dripping from the smirk that curled the corner of her mouth. She wore a long, loose coat over standard greys that were upper-caste quality and probably cost four times what the Hanran genin's monthly pay had been. She ran her fingers idly over the hilt of her katana, resting across her knees in its lacquered sheath. Haku glanced over once, instinctive threat assessment - low; hands wrapped, preferred close quarter combat - and the second he made eye contact with her, she winked at him and licked her lips.

Haku turned away as quickly as he could without showing his unease.

They passed the weapons depot that catered to the upper caste on the central thoroughfare. Its windows were shuttered with metal sheets, and though charred marks peppered its walls, it stood alone and intact between a collapsed market known for its brined jellyfish from the southern Kiri islands and a burned-out dessert stall popular among civilian children. It drew an ironic huff from Haku as they passed.

Residential housing, civilian clothing store, mid-range grocer, shinobi outfitter, secondhand weapons store - Haku matched the battered buildings with those of his memory. A fallen tree blocked their path, split off from its fellows from a douton that had uprooted it from its copse between one block and the next. Haku hopped up onto the trunk and down the other side, deliberately ignoring the squads - Hanran - camped in the second floor of the adjacent building.

Neji made a soft sound under his breath. Haku paused, and Temari hissed, "What do you see?" She tilted her head, giving herself room to reach her tessen more easily in preparation for an ambush. Neji's mouth and nose were masked by a dark bandana so nearly his entire face was covered, but Temari was using a subtle fuuton to keep from breathing in the ash.

"There is a kunoichi approaching from four o'clock, rapid walking pace, closing fast, one hundred and fifty meters," Neji responded, voice smooth despite his underlying tension. "She split off from a loyalist camp and appears to be following us. Black hakama, light blue kosode. Standard-sized katana. She is alone."

Black hakama, light blue kosode. Haku bit down a grimace and started walking again. "Light brown hair, dark grey eyes?"

"Yes," said Neji, the cloth wrinkling over his forehead as he frowned, and followed.

"You know her," Temari prompted.

"Keep walking," Haku said, smoothing his gait into a stately prowl. "She loves an audience. I would rather avoid that."

Thankfully, Temari and Neji trailed him wordlessly as he turned down an alley shrouded by bare, spiny branches. In the warmer months, the trees would be laden with drooping, lacy leaves, but the winter had stolen their color away.

"Hey, mongrel. Stop right there."

Haku stopped and turned smoothly to face the speaker, taking care to keep his posture loose and relaxed, and felt more than saw Neji and Temari melt backwards and angle to cover his back. The face was familiar, but the last time Haku had seen her, the flak jacket and the newly clotted slash running down her right temple had been absent.

Her stare was cold, the set of her mouth moreso, and her voice was as hard and sharp as the blade slung over her back. "Finally crawled out of whatever hole you fell down? You should have stayed there to rot."

Temari bristled but she didn't speak even when the other kunichi switched a challenging gaze to her. "Kiyoko-san," Haku greeted, his eyes lowered deferentially. "Congratulations on your promotion. What a pity that your time as a genin has passed without Yuukiko-san choosing you as an apprentice."

Kiyoko bared her teeth in a vicious smile. "Watch your tongue," she purred. "Your sensei isn't the shinobi he used to be, and your disrespect will not be tolerated. Better practice your grovelling or you'll be flotsam before spring arrives."

"I am, as ever, grateful for your advice," Haku said, smiling slightly. "Truly, it is an asset to my career. I appreciate that you felt the desire to go out of your way to enlighten me."

Kiyoko's eyes flashed and she stepped into Haku's space, snapping her hand up to grab Haku by the jaw, but he twisted, sliding away easily. "Ah. Perhaps I should remind you that Zabuza-san does not like others to touch that which belongs to him," Haku said mildly. "I wouldn't want you to end up with his ire. Or, perhaps, are you unafraid, because you believe Zabuza-san is 'not the shinobi he used to be?'"

The kunoichi let her hand drop, her face smoothing back over. "He must not be, if he picked up two more low caste vermin to tote around." She let her gaze skate over Temari and Neji dismissively. "Surely, as Momochi's apprentice, these two slow you down. What are they, cannon fodder? At least they know not to speak before their superiors."

"They are still Zabuza-san's," Haku said. The back of his neck prickled with his teammates' hostility, but their tempers held. "It would be wise to leave them be."

Kiyoko's smile returned, slow and smooth. "You must know that if one or both of them dies, there is still leverage against him. He has many weaknesses now."

Haku moved too fast for the other shinobi to react, laying a feather-light hand on her chest, just over her heart. "I am charged with their handling. Take care," he warned softly, as she sucked in an involuntary gasp. "Hearts cannot beat when they are frozen."

Kiyoko's eyes narrowed furiously. "You dare threaten your betters, you low-caste whore?" she hissed. "It will be your life."

Haku smiled but his eyes held no warmth. "Is that so?" he said lightly. "I would never dream of doing such a thing. But even if I did, I cannot imagine how they would catch me. Even you know that the _Atarutai_ never leave evidence."

"You're twelve," Kiyoko sneered, but her shoulders were stiff and wary, her body held still under the threat of Haku's ice. "You're not of the Undertaker Squad."

"When I was ten or so," Haku said almost absently, "I was drafted into the hunter-nin because the Mizukage thought Zabuza-san stepped out of line. It was supposed to set me up for failure; it was supposed to be my death." He leaned in closer, and Kiyoko bared her teeth in a warning snarl. "It was a punishment for him, but it was training for me. It was very good training. And I was very good at it." Haku patted her gently and stepped back, leaving her silent and furious and wary. "Thank you for your time," he said, and bowed. "It was kind of you to honor us with your presence. You must have far more important things to do."

Kiyoko knew a corner when she was backed into it. "You think you are untouchable," she said, silky smooth and venomous. "You are not. It will be a pleasure to see you put in your place." She whirled, her sleeves billowing with the movement, and took off back down the way she had come.

Haku's pulse had not sped up once during the entire encounter. He let his grip on his chakra loosen and took a deliberately measured breath, then a second, and a third. Kiyoko's footsteps, barely audible even directly in front of him, faded beyond his hearing.

"Clear," said Neji. "She has gone."

Haku closed his eyes, let his shoulders slump, and turned around to face his team.

Temari huffed a laugh. "Wow," she said. "That bad, huh?"

Haku had been gone from the Village, from other Kiri shinobi, for too long. He wasn't used to the constant hostility after the buffer provided by Shisui, Itachi, the captain, and in general all of Hanabi-ha. The one short encounter with Kiyoko had drained his energy. "That," Haku said grimly, "is Kirigakure. I would consider an encounter like that a success."

Her eyebrows drew together in a slight frown. "Does that happen often?"

"Low caste shinobi are frequent targets of harassment, especially genin," Haku said evenly, a confirmation and admittance that burned with resentment he did not allow to surface. "Kiyoko in particular dislikes me because we became genin at the same time though I was much younger than her, and I was Zabuza-san's apprentice while her sensei did not choose to make her one."

Neji and Temari exchanged glances. "How old were you?" Neji asked.

"Seven," answered Haku. "Zabuza-san had been training me privately for four years before he had me registered."

"Handling? Apprentice?" Temari prompted. "That sounded like more than just a genin team thing."

"Later," said Haku. He had no desire to hash out that particular explanation here. "I don't want to keep Shisui-san and Itachi-san waiting."

Temari scrutinized him carefully but nodded. "Lead the way," she said.

"There are sixteen shinobi in the building across from the alley mouth," Neji reported. "It is a loyalist camp with one guard, all armed but weapons sheathed. It is not an active threat, but should a retreat become necessary, I would suggest an escape route down the road at our current ten o'clock."

"Thank you, noted," said Haku, tucking his hands into his sleeves. "Let's go."

Team Suzaku's route through the Village was far shorter that the circumspect path Shisui and Itachi had taken, but the two were waiting in the small park in front of the Old Academy grounds by the time Haku slipped through the bushes to their small clearing. Once upon a time, this park had been well kept and manicured. By the time Haku arrived in Kiri, the Old Academy had been closed for over ten years, and the park abandoned with it. Weeds choked the bushes and warred with the grass for fertile ground; tree branches dipped low and others lay half-buried in leaf litter.

Shisui, as bizarrely habitual in shinobi from Konoha, perched in the boughs of an entirely barren tree. His tanto was in his lap and he ran absent-minded fingers along its wrapped hilt. Itachi stood next to him, his eyes distant and his expression a smooth mask to rival Shisui's porcelain one. Ash dusted their hair and settled on their clothes, and for a moment Haku jolted back to the Yondaime's last stand. He blinked the memory away.

"Hey, kids," Shisui greeted cheerfully. "Run into any trouble?"

"Only an old acquaintance," Haku replied before either of his teammates could answer.

"We have not been followed," Neji added.

"Cool," said Shisui. "Come on, then." He hopped down, absorbing the impact from the five meter drop as though it was a fifth of that height, and Itachi alighted at his side with equal grace. "Five man teams aren't super common since they're not as maneuverable as a trio and too small to consider a multiple-team squad, but we don't think splitting up is the best idea. I don't want to have to go wandering around to find someone if there really is something wrong inside."

"Ichi and I will take point," said Itachi. "Rei and Ni will follow. Juu will serve as rearguard."

"We did a loop of the grounds," Shisui added, rocking back on his feet. "It doesn't look like anyone's inside or tried to claim it."

"Ichi." Itachi nodded once to Haku. "What is the ideal point of entry?"

Haku took less than a second to decide. "Side doorway leading to the south wing. It's relatively contained. It may be vulnerable to a trap due to its relatively narrow hallway, but it will make it difficult to surround us. A team our size should be able to clear each room while maintaining a guard in the hallway."

Shisui glanced at Itachi, who tilted his head to cede the decision to his cousin. "Side entrance to the south wing sounds good, but we won't need to clear the rooms," Shisui said. "We're only forward scouting. The plan is to do a lap through the facility and make sure it's inhabitable, then send in other teams to clear it out and do setup if it's fine."

Roots and the weather had upturned the stones of the cobbled pathway, weeds and overgrown grass and untrimmed shrubbery spilling into the entryway. Haku's chakra ran icy tendrils into his bloodstream, but whether from the memory of the place or a present threat, he couldn't tell. The solid steel doors loomed forebodingly behind the greenery. They had neither rusted nor discolored over the long years.

"Ni," Itachi prompted, one step to the front and one to the side of Haku. "Scan for traps - seals, tripwires, anything out of place."

"Nothing," Neji answered after a pause. "It's clean. The doors are not trapped and the hallway is empty."

"Kiri severed all ties with this Academy," Haku said, forcibly relaxing hands that had clenched unconsciously at his side. "No one will break in, and even if they did, no one would care. There is no reason to trap or seal this place."

"Be careful, anyways," Shisui called from further back.

Itachi didn't respond as he stepped forward. The handle turned easily under his hand, and he pulled the door open with a whisper of a creak from its hinges and slipped inside. With one more steadying breath, Haku followed.

Hairline fractures ran through the concrete floors beneath their feet, and though the walls kept out the wind, an icy chill still sank into Haku's bones the second he stepped inside. The walls, the floor, and the ceiling were all concrete, smooth and grey.

Itachi flicked the switch on the wall next to them, but the recessed lights didn't so much as flicker. "Power was cut," he murmured. "No electricity, no lights. Follow."

Haku's breath puffed out in front of him, visible in the sunlight spilling in from the door. "The door on the left is a closet, the one on the right is a classroom," he said, voice hushed. "There are a total of eight classrooms in this hallway. The training arena is ahead and spans from the second level down to the basement."

The light at their backs flickered as Neji and Temari advanced into the Old Academy after them. "This place is kind of creepy," Temari said, and her voice echoed in the empty hallway. "Don't see any ghosts, though."

The door closed behind Shisui, plunging them all into darkness. Haku glanced sideways to Itachi in time to see his eyes whirl red. The darkness at the far end of the hall remained uninterrupted, but Haku knew Shisui must have activated his doujutsu as well. "On second thought, perhaps I will prop the door open," Shisui said, his voice pitched to minimize the reverberation. "Itachi?"

The crimson winked out for just a moment when Itachi blinked. "Rei," he said. "Can you maneuver and fight effectively without light?"

"I'm not going to walk into walls," Temari answered, just a little dry. "But I'm not the best at fighting blind yet."

Itachi considered. "Keep the door closed," he said. "Minimize who knows we are here. Rei, in case of attack, defense only."

"Hai," Temari agreed.

"Ichi and Ni, protect her." He turned back around without waiting for a response. "Ichi, with me."

Oddly enough, Haku felt more at ease when he couldn't see. There was only the quiet pad of their sandals on the floor, the brush of stagnant air on his face and through his hair. Twenty meters forward, he could feel the change in the air as they approached the curved wall of the upper half of the arena. Abruptly, apprehension rose in his chest. "Upstairs," Haku said, breathing down the dread that prickled along his neck. "The training arena is large and best covered last."

Itachi's eyes flicked to him, calculating. "Very well," he said. "Which side?"

"Right," said Haku, more sure.

A glimmer of light illuminated the second level of the Old Academy, filtering in from the narrow window at the end of the hallway. Itachi nudged his way into the first classroom, pushing back the shouji door papered with cracked and yellowing sheets. The windows were boarded over, remnants of glass scattered along where the floor met the wall, and the blackboard still had the remnants of a chalked equation for calculating the trajectory of a shuriken.

"If you ignore all the concrete, this place is actually not too bad," Temari said, trailing her fingers through the dust coating the surface of the nearest desk. "Do all the classrooms look like this?"

"Yes," said Haku. He drifted to the front of the classroom. "They are more or less identical. There were around thirty students per class for the younger children and twenty for classes preparing to graduate, so there was no need for the classroom size to change."

"How many classes is that?" Temari asked curiously. "This is a pretty big place."

"The Academy was built to accommodate about thirteen hundred to fifteen hundred students," Haku said, cautiously poking open the cabinet in the corner. There was a broom, a mop, a dustpan, and a bucket inside, all far too filthy for their intended use. He closed the door again carefully. "Enrollment happened twice a year - and still does in the rest of Kiri's Academies - and filled five classes each time."

Neji had not taken more than a step into the classroom. "How many of those graduated?" he asked quietly.

Haku kept his eyes forward and his voice steady when he answered, "Less than fifty."

The first set of dormitories they encountered were as spartan as the shinobi barracks, with shelves inset in the walls, bunks stacked three up and end to end cushioned only by thin sleeping pads, and untouched bedding folded with military precision. Itachi pushed the door open but did not go inside, and after peering in from behind him, Haku had just as little desire to enter the cramped space. Itachi left the door ajar and continued down the hall wordlessly.

Shisui made a small sound in the back of his throat. "Not to be depressing," he said. "But the design of this place really reminds me of the detention block in the catacombs."

"That is depressing," Temari muttered. "They don't really care about the students' comfort here, do they?"

Haku quickened his step. "Not these students."

The rooms at the very back, in a long row perpendicular to all the other rows, were just a little smaller. At Neji's, "Clear," Itachi opened the door to a private room, sunlight streaming in from between the boards on the window. There was a bed and desk on either side of the room and a set of shelves under the window. Itachi and Haku stood looking in from the doorway in silence as the rest of the team bunched up behind them. Finally, Neji said, "These are not the teachers' quarters, are they?" His tone was even but undercut by a resentment that ran deep and stirred at the slightest reminder.

"No," answered Haku, his own voice distant and chilly. "They are not."

Itachi closed the door.

Haku's own bitterness distracted him from the last location not yet scouted until they were padding down the pitch-black stairway and the realization of where they were going froze his muscles and his breath midstep. "Ichi?" Itachi prompted sharply, his doujutsu's glow combing the darkness. "Ni, eyes."

"No sign of enemies," Neji reported, low and clear despite the undercurrent of wariness and confusion.

Haku swallowed. "It's nothing," he rasped. "Sorry. The main entrances are on the basement level."

"This is the last bit," Shisui said encouragingly. "And not a single ghost so far. How's everyone feeling?"

"A little creeped out, but I'm fine, Sensei," said Temari. "Could use a water break, though."

Haku suspected the last bit, tacked on almost like an afterthought, had been for his benefit. He appreciated the thought but resented its implications.

"Ten minute break," Itachi said quietly, before Haku could finish wrestling over whether or not to insist that they keep going.

Neji shed his silent stride, sandals scuffling against the concrete as he shuffled in closer. He pressed something hard and flat against Haku as he brushed past, and Haku realized with some chagrin as he took it that it was a water canteen. Haku was used to watching out for Neji - the youngest of Team Suzaku, the sensor, who couldn't run as fast as Haku or hit as hard as Temari and stayed out of the way in the back during fights. But this place unsettled Haku enough that he felt grateful rather than disgruntled that even Neji pitied him enough to attempt to comfort him.

Fearful, superstitious Haku, who lost his nerve like a cracked civilian raving about _onryou._

And it was only him bothered by the Academy. Itachi's doujutsu whirled and faded, conserving chakra rather than seeking out threats. Cloth shifted as he crouched, one knee down on the concrete as he pulled out his own canteen.

Haku twisted open the water, raising to his lips automatically. These hallways were cold, colder than the brewing winter outside, and he shivered and drew his haori closer to his body. Had the temperature dropped? Was it a harbinger of the restless spirits of the children who had died within these walls?

"Ichi-kun," Shisui said quietly, urgently, and Haku's eyes snapped up, scanning for danger. His heart sped up and his breath puffed out in little white clouds -

 _"Haku."_ Shisui was in front of him, carefully projecting his movements as he reached out and gripped Haku's shoulder with one hand as the other cradled a tiny flame in his palm. The warmth from his hand sank through Haku's haori -

 _Oh._ The cold was him, his chakra, billowing out and freezing the air around him. _Get it together, Haku, and hope no one tells Zabuza about this._ Zabuza had no use for a coward. Haku breathed in and clamped down on his chakra hard. The icy chill winked out abruptly, leaving only the concrete-chill behind. "I apologize," he said stiffly. "That won't happen again."

"Haku-kun," Shisui said, his frown audible, "before we started, we said that if any of us felt anything odd - "

"I'm fine," Haku insisted, as politely as he could while interrupting him. "I have been here before without lasting negative effects."

Itachi glanced at Shisui. Shisui studied Haku. At last, Shisui nodded.

Haku ignored Temari's concerned gaze and handed Neji back his canteen.

His resolve lasted through the descent to the basement level. The curved wall of the arena loomed above them as they reached the double doors set directly opposite the stairwell. Itachi tried the handles. They didn't turn.

"There's a seal," Haku said. "You will need to disrupt it to gain entrance."

"I thought no one cared if anyone broke in," Temari said.

Haku smiled humorlessly. "This seal is more to keep things in than out. I should warn you - this is where you would feel it the strongest."

"What is _it?_ Killing intent?" asked Temari cautiously, as Neji said, "The seal is one meter directly above the center of the doors."

"Not sakki," Haku said. He hesitated, casting in his mind for the right word. _"Shinigawa -_ the last moments."

Itachi scaled the wall in a bound, sticking to the surface just above the seal. His doujutsu whirled as he examined it.

"If it's not sakki, it doesn't sound too bad," said Shisui, but his tone was wary rather than dismissive. "What is shinigawa, exactly?"

Haku struggled for the words.

Itachi warned, "Prepare yourselves." He pressed a hand to the seal and deactivated it.

The dread that had been snapping at Haku's heels unfolded and reared its head, but Haku was ready for it. The rest of the team was not.

"Oh, _shit,"_ Shisui breathed empathetically, catching Temari with one arm as she staggered backwards, her face white.

Neji dropped into a crouch and demanded through gritted teeth, _"What is that?"_

 _That_ was shinigawa. It was nothing like a bijuu's all-encompassing hatred, a sakki so strong it could trick the body into thinking that it was dying. Shinigawa was the split second of terror when one realized they were about to die, and the resignation and rage that went with it. But most of all, it was the hopelessness that drowned them and dragged them down, that demanded they fall to their knees and submit to the inevitable. It was no easier for Haku to handle now than it had the first time around - worse, perhaps, because of the anticipation.

Neji lurched upright with none of his usual grace, and he sidled in a little too close to Haku, but Haku didn't mind. He welcomed the other boy's warmth, cutting through the chill of the shinigawa and Haku's own, unchecked chakra.

"If you are uncomfortable with proceeding, say so now," Itachi said. He sounded entirely unaffected by that unnamed force that pressed down on Haku's shoulders and stole the breath from his lungs, and he envied that.

"I will see this through," Haku said, grateful when his voice did not shake.

Temari muttered agreement. Neji said nothing, but stayed still and resolved next to Haku. "If either of us tells you to get out, you get out," Shisui ordered. The flame cradled in his hand flared, growing in size and intensity.

Itachi landed on the ground lightly and without another word, ventured into the darkness. Haku took a fortifying breath and followed.

The quiet clack of his sandals broke the utter silence, and the stagnant air of the tunnel walls pressed in on him. Haku wondered if the blood he smelled was his imagination or the remnants of a massacre long past.

Zabuza told him the story just once, here, his voice a low rumble as he laid out the details clinically, emotionlessly, as if it were any other mission, but Haku remembered it so vividly he could picture the scene in his head with startling clarity as he followed Itachi into the heart of the arena.

There was the door the graduation candidates marched out of, dressed in matching, ceremonial grey training uniforms, brand new in a farce of equality, that would bare the bloodstains of success for the killers and failure for their victims. There was where Zabuza stood, five years old between two twice his age, ignoring their confusion at the child in their midst.

There was where Zabuza's handlers activated the seal to lock the would-be graduates in and the proctors out. Twelve hundred students and their class sensei watched in confusion from the audience seats and the hundred and eight students down on the arena floor shuffled uncertainly. From his viewing box, sixteen-year-old Karatachi Yagura, seventeen months into his first years as Mizukage, ordered his guard to find out what was going on.

There was the place where the first body hit the ground. Zabuza drove a kunai through the girl's chest so abruptly that she never realized that she had died. There was where a boy had thrown himself into the seal barrier in an attempt to escape, only to fall back into Zabuza's blade. This was where two high-caste girls and one high-caste boy had tried to corner him with an elementary suiton and kunai and katana, where he painted the concrete wall with their blood and brain matter.

And here was the spot where Zabuza stood, staring fearlessly up to meet the Mizukage's eyes, with blood soaking into his sandals and between his toes and a hundred and eight bodies scattered across the floor, until the barrier came down and the guards dragged him away.

' _Why did you do it?'_ the Mizukage had asked when a disarmed and unresisting Zabuza had been shoved to his knees before him.

' _I was following orders,'_ Zabuza had responded, still following his handlers' orders.

The Mizukage had handed him a kunai, motioned towards Zabuza's handlers - who had raised him, trained him, shaped him - and ordered, _'Kill them.'_

And Zabuza had taken the kunai and brought his kill count for the day up to a hundred and ten.

' _Shut it down,'_ the Mizukage had told his guard. _'The eugenics program. End this test; it is wasteful.'_

' _And the boy?'_ his guard had asked, a hand on the hilt of his katana as he eyed Zabuza - eyed the five-year-old mass murderer, kneeling over the corpses of his latest kills. _A sane man would have put down the rabid thing,_ Zabuza had told Haku, sharp teeth bared in a crooked grin.

The Yondaime had looked at the boy soaked in blood and said, _'No. He will be a great asset to Kirigakure someday.'_

Thousands of children had fought and died on this arena floor, but that day, a demon had been born.

The bloodstains should have washed out of the floor easily. Like the rest of the Academy, it was concrete, made for durability and easy cleaning. But though the arena still stood, solid and foreboding, and only lightly scarred by blade and jutsu over the years, the reddish-brown tinge clung stubbornly to the concrete.

The audience seats yawned above them, rows of stone steps yawning into the shadows cast by Shisui's tiny katon. Haku's neck prickled with the feeling of invisible eyes on him, but even without looking he knew there was no one there. He turned anyways, straining eyes and ears both into the nothingness.

"There is nothing we need to see here," Shisui said abruptly, and though he didn't raise his voice it sounded almost obscenely loud. "Everybody out."

Never had Haku been more grateful to be given permission to flee.

Belatedly, squinting against the sunlight and sucking in a lungful of the smoky air, he realized Shisui might have meant _out of the arena_ rather than _out of the Old Academy_. But Neji was right there at his side, clutching a nearby tree for support. "Are you okay?" he murmured to Neji. The other boy nodded, too rattled for affront, and used the trunk to push upright.

Temari stumbled out of the doors behind them, and then, abruptly, the shinigawa snuffed out. The air rushed back into Haku's lungs as an invisible weight lifted off his shoulders, and Neji shook his head as though that would rid him of the lingering effects. "Itachi-sensei put the seal back on, thank the gods," Temari said, pale beneath her tan.

"You sure rabbitted fast," Shisui said cheerfully as he strolled out behind them, all easy grace now that they were back in the sunlight and the shinigawa had been suppressed. "Proud of you kids. Looks like the speed drills really helped."

Haku smiled shakily. He let his chakra frost his fingers, taking comfort in the bite of the cold.

"So," said Shisui, eyeing them keenly. Itachi slipped out behind him, pulling the door closed gently. "What do you think about the Old Academy as housing for Hana-ha?"

What did Haku think? Haku thought Hana-ha was better off living in caves like San and the wolves. Unfortunately, Hana-ha probably would not agree.

"We can't _not_ use it," Temari pointed out pragmatically. "Winter's only beginning. It'll be miserable and dangerous without a real roof."

"The danger is the shinigawa," Neji said slowly, not quite objecting. "I would rather winter outdoors than live in the middle of that."

Haku managed to pry his throat open long enough to force words out. "If the arena remains sealed," he said, the words sticking to the roof of his mouth, "then I think using the Old Academy for housing is viable. It is large enough to hold a lot of shinobi."

Itachi and Shisui exchanged a long, considering glance, but Haku knew that their minds had been made up even before the door closed behind them. "This facility was designed to house up to fifteen hundred students," Itachi mused.

"Between the classrooms and dormitories, we can double that capacity," Shisui said. "It'll be tight, but that's at least five or six units. If we used the arena, we could fit more, but - " he grimaced. "I'd rather not bet lives on that."

"Three thousand," said Itachi, nodding decisively.

"Yeah," said Shisui, giving Haku, Neji, and Temari a nod. "Good points, all of you. We'll ask the captain to throw up a couple more seals on the arena to make sure nobody can break in. It'll be fine."

Haku eyed the foreboding walls of the Old Academy. It would be fine. It had to be.

Haku wasn't quite sure who had smuggled six shinobi children varying in levels of conspicuity into the back of the hospital tent, or how they had accomplished such a feat, but upon their return, the wall between the captain's room and Zabuza's had been rolled up and the rest of the refugee children were piled up in the corner in a mound of sleeping mats and blankets. Zabuza's pallet had been shifted closer to the far wall, ostensibly to lessen the chances of someone bumping it, and as Haku followed Shisui and Itachi into the room, the captain and Zabuza looked up from where they had been poring over reports next to and on the pallet respectively.

"Taichou," Itachi greeted, tugging the flap down behind him and lighting the secrecy seal with a twist of chakra.

The captain's half-lidded eye flicked over the returning team, counting, assessing, and he nodded once. Zabuza raised an eyebrow. "Didn't die. Good for you."

Didn't die. Good.

Haku was fresh out of adrenaline, and his mind churned sluggishly. Good. He was good.

"Go on, you three sleep," said Shisui, giving Haku a nudge in the direction of the children-pile. "Good work today." Haku shot a fleeting glance over his shoulder, just to double check that Zabuza's condition had not worsened while he was away. It had not; so reassured, Haku let himself drift towards the siren call of the bedding and the sleep it promised.

Sasuke was buried under a heap of blankets, just the tip of his hair visible. Naruto sprawled half on top of him, limbs akimbo and entwined hopelessly with Sakura and Sai. Gaara leaned against Sai's back, his hands loose and empty in his lap. Hinata lay between Sai and Gaara, her hair splayed out behind her in a fan.

Gaara watched their approach silently with dark-rimmed, unblinking eyes, up until Temari crouched to run her hand through his shaggy hair. "Hi, otouto," she whispered, and his eyes lidded as he leaned into her touch.

Neji liberated a blanket from Sasuke's grasp, who had curled up with no fewer than four, and folded himself under it at the edges of the pile without another word, where he made a very good semblance of falling asleep instantaneously. Haku envied him. He was too tired to think. He eyed the tangle of limbs and blankets uncertainly, not sure where he fit.

"C'mere," Temari murmured, tugging him down. She too stole a blanket from Sasuke, pulling it out from under Naruto and draping it over both herself and Haku as she tucked him close to her side. He could hear the rasp of her breathing, feel the heat from her body and the rhythmic thumping of her heart, and instead of potential targets, those sounds were a comfort.

Someone on his other side shifted, long hair brushing against his arm as they - maybe Hinata - rolled over and went still again. Someone else's shoulder pressed against his, but Haku's head was too heavy to turn to see who.

"Ichi?" Naruto's sleepy voice drifted over the pile, quietly for Naruto but far from the silence Haku desired. It would be polite to respond, but Haku no longer cared about being polite. "Ichi! You're back! You totally - "

"Shh," Temari scolded, her voice barely a rumble. "Let him sleep, Roku."

"Oh," said Naruto. "Oops. Sorry! I'll be quiet now."

"Shhhh," went Sakura drowsily, still asleep.

Haku's adrenaline had faded, his battles left behind. The captain was here, Itachi and Shisui were here, and his team was here. The entire Yorozoku pack was surrounding him. Zabuza was safe, and so was he.

Wrapped in blankets and the warmth of his pack, Haku let himself sleep.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17: Kakashi's Had A Lot Of Wins Lately, Which Is Suspicious

Congratulations! Your DUMPSTER FIRE KAKASHI evolved into TRAINWRECK KAKASHI™!

* * *

MISSION REPORT D-417

Contact with enemy combatants: three (3) incidents.

Enemy combatants from origin: Konohagakure (2); Sunagakure (1).

Status of Operative Cat-15:

Stable. No major injuries or illness.

Status of AT2:

Approximate age-appropriate growth continued. Social skills unable to measured.

Self-sustaining skills acquisition rated as ahead of average age group performance in both speed and retention in all areas except social development, which remains unmeasured.

Beginning-level combat and infiltration training continued. Combat skills acquisition rated as ahead of average age group performance in both speed and retention.

Status of TAP73I:

Stable. Present base camp located in [REDACTED].

No enemy contact reported. No enemy observations reported.

Duration of last contact with Operative Cat-15: 17 days.

Time elapsed after last contact with Operative Cat-15: 3 days.

Conclusion: TAP73I is satisfactorily self-sustaining in procuring food, water, shelter, and clothing. Mock combat evaluations estimate an 85% success rate of first combat contact with ACSG present, 50% with ACST present, 40% with ACNS present, 20% with ACHN present, and 5% without the above named. Success rate of following combat contacts decrease sharply; TAP73I has been advised to leave the site quickly and stealthily after any enemy contact.

Plan of action: Operative Cat-15 will depart the TAP73I base camp with AT2 and continue to maintain minimal contact.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

* * *

Kakashi's broken arm itched. It wasn't strictly broken anymore, the edges of the fracture joined by gossamer-thin bone that the medic-nin Kurumi had coaxed into holding his arm together, but it was fragile enough that Kurumi had splinted it in a cast and given him a sling.

Given was misleading word. Forced was more accurate. Nothing stopped him from taking it off, physically, but given that Tsunade herself was an iryou-nin, going against medical orders would incur her wrath, and it had been a long day - week, month, year - and topping it off with a pissed superior officer wasn't his idea of a good time.

So Kakashi wore his sling like a good little shinobi and made the best of his situation by using it to store the rolled-up messages and reports that apparently accumulated when one was off assassinating a Kage. Zabuza, still stoned half out of his mind, squinted at him like he wasn't sure if he was actually awake and watching Kakashi squirrel his papers away on top of his broken arm. Kakashi gave him his best bullshitting smile. Zabuza blinked twice, hard, visibly decided not to ask, and went back to his own packet spread out on his knees with a grunt. Kakashi had his doubts that the other man was actually reading them.

Kakashi was still grounded, which was why he was still in the medical tent, gently annoying Zabuza and ostensibly keeping an eye on the puppy pile of genin in the corner. Shisui and Itachi had come and gone, as Kakashi watched from his corner. He knew for a fact that Itachi was supposed to be on light duty, because though they'd cleaned up his concussion pretty well, his ribs were still wrapped and healing. Therefore, Kakashi should also be allowed to leave Medical, but for some reason he had been vetoed on the grounds of organ damage.

To be fair, Kakashi did want to sleep - just not on a foldable pallet in a medical tent where Shizune could materialize out of the ether and stab him in the neck with a syringe full of painkillers so he woke up as high as a kite, like she had Zabuza. But his chakra was still low enough that his head felt stuffed with cotton and the room spun every time he moved too quickly.

He was stubborn enough to stay awake for a little longer. He just needed Shisui or Itachi to come back, so he could pass the watch to someone awake, unimpaired, and older than eleven. Gaara was awake as always, but his pale eyes were distant and glazed over.

As if summoned by the thought, Kakashi caught Itachi's scent amidst the antiseptic sting that permeated the medical tent, and he lifted his head - slowly, carefully - in time to watch him slip into the tent. His eyes skittered over the genin in the corner, counting them, before meeting Kakashi's. His eyebrows furrowed in a slight frown. "You should rest, Taichou," he said, as if the dark circles under his own eyes did not exist. "You look unwell."

Kakashi had no energy for quips. "Take the watch," he said, sweeping the rest of his reports into a messy pile. "Wake me in three hours." He might have felt bad for dumping the responsibility onto a subordinate who was clearly exhausted, but Itachi wasn't supposed to sleep very long anyways - at least not for another half day or so.

"Hai," said Itachi obediently.

Or not so obediently, because the next time Kakashi opened his eye, it was of his own accord, and the encroaching evening had turned into mid-morning. "Traitor," he grated out, blinking away the grogginess.

Shisui leaned over him, the leopard mask absent. "Hey, Taichou," he said cheerfully. "Good to see you awake. You're in Medical, and as your attending, Shizune-sensei overrode your orders. Don't blame Itachi."

Kakashi sat up gingerly, his arm twinging in warning when he tried to move it. Zabuza was knocked out, his blanket pulled up over his nose. Itachi was an unmoving lump of dark cloth on a pallet with his katana in easy reach. He looked exhausted and very young; it was hard to blame him. Kakashi scrubbed a hand over his eye absently and transferred his glance to Shisui. "Sitrep."

Shisui straightened. "There have been a few scattered skirmishes in the city, but most of the loyalists have surrendered and the Hanran have taken point on suppression of those who haven't," he recited. "Hanabi-ha has secured the temporary base camp in the training grounds. Company commanding officers are expected to perform and report final headcounts by tonight. Teams have been sent to the Old Academy for cleanup and preparation, and estimated time for move-in is two days. Tsunade-sama did not attend the last Command meeting but is expected to be present for the one at 1700 hours today. Commander Nara continues to act as Hanabi-ha's leader and diplomatic representative in the interim. The joint Command meeting has been scheduled for 0900 hours tomorrow."

Kakashi grimaced, swinging his legs over the side of the pallet. Joint Command meetings were like paperwork: necessary but distasteful, with a small but still present chance of one killing themselves to avoid it. "Shikaku's going to need to brief me. Where is Command set up?"

There was a brief, polite silence as Shisui debated whether or not to say it. "Taichou," he said. "I don't think you've been cleared yet."

Kakashi stretched his senses out into the rest of the medical tent, probing in particular for Shizune. She wasn't there, and therefore could not stop him. "I'm discharging myself," he announced. He gave Shisui a pointed stare. "Threatening to shove me isn't going to work this time."

Shisui narrowed his eye. "Is this the example you want to set for the kids?"

Playing dirty. How shinobi. Kakashi glanced over at the assorted children, who were mostly awake save Haku, and were watching their exchange with unabashed interest.

Damnit.

"At least get me something to eat that isn't Medical rations," Kakashi said, sinking to sit back down on his pallet now that his escape had been thwarted. Temporarily shelved.

Shisui's eye curved into a particularly annoying smile. He had the manners not to openly gloat when he raised his voice and said, "Rei-chan, why don't you and Team Byakko get us all some breakfast?" he suggested. "Shichi and Kyuu, help me find either Kurumi-sensei, Kuri-sensei, or Shizune-sensei. Ni and Hachi, run a message to the commander, will you?"

As the named genin filed out in a mini exodus, Kakashi patted himself down subtly with his good hand. Someone - either Shisui or Kurumi or one of the other medic-nin - had removed the reports stashed in his sling, but left the weapons hidden under his standard Kiri greys. He frowned at Shisui.

Shisui said, "I'll give them back when you get cleared by the medics." Shisui was perhaps a little too confident in his ability to keep Kakashi from doing what he wanted, now that he had sent the underaged audience away. He seemed to realize this when Kakashi narrowed his eye.

"Give me the paperwork and I won't leave now," Kakashi offered magnanimously.

A pause. "Taichou," Shisui said, his smirk audible. "Are you asking for paperwork of your own free will?"

Kakashi bit back a sigh. Teenagers were such brats.

"Fine," said Shisui, producing the missing reports with a flourish. "Your command is my command. Fully expect me to throw you to the wolves if the medic-nin get upset."

Kakashi took the reports and somehow felt as though he'd still lost.

Itachi stirred not long after, shifting from asleep to awake in between one breath and the next. Kakashi glanced at him over the top of his reports, but his eyes were still closed and his breathing even.

"Good morning, cousin," Shisui said wryly from the opposite side, and only then did Itachi open his eyes and sit up.

"Taichou. Shisui," he rasped, his fingers ghosting over his ribs gingerly. "How long was I asleep?"

"Nine hours," Shisui answered, frowning at Itachi's side.

Itachi blinked, the grogginess in his eyes fading bit by bit. "I see," he managed, and proceeded to spend the next thirty seconds staring vacantly at the far wall.

"Hey, you know what we need?" Shisui said, tapping his fingers on the surface of his pallet. "A team name."

"What?" said Kakashi.

"We don't have a team name," Shisui explained patiently. "We should have a team call sign, especially for the reports on the Mizukage Assassination mission."

Kakashi would have suggested 'Team Kakashi' or 'Team Hatake' but his identity was supposed to be kept hidden. "Alpha Team."

Shisui gave him a pitying look. "Fortunately for the unimaginative - but practical!" he added hurriedly when Kakashi narrowed his eye, "I have an idea already: Team Seiryuu."

"Symbol of strength, power, and leadership. A little pretentious, isn't it?" Kakashi didn't know if he could go into a joint Command meeting and call himself a member of 'Team Seiryuu' with a straight face.

"We can match the kids! We'll have all four of the guardian spirits," Shisui said, a frankly unnerving light in his eye, and turned to his cousin.

"I have no opinion on this matter," said Itachi. Shisui rolled his eye expansively and gave him a pointed stare until he said, "Team Seiryuu is acceptable."

"Team Seiryuu," Shisui repeated with an air of victory. "I'm putting that in the official reports, Taichou."

Clearly, Kakashi had no say in this matter. "Team Seiryuu," he agreed listlessly, and ignored Shisui's gleeful aura in favor of returning to his notes.

Hinata and Gaara had found Shizune. She swept in trailing the kids and projecting both an air of distraction and one of intense focus. She spared a smile for Shisui. "Good to see you. How is the stab wound doing?"

"Which one?" Shisui quipped. "They're both fine. I'm not bleeding anymore, I promise," he added, when she shot him a look.

"Good," said Shizune, turning to Itachi with a hand already cupped with healing chakra. Itachi's eyes flicked towards her sharply, and she paused, slowing her movements. "I just need to check out your head, okay?"

Itachi blinked. "Aa. I apologize," he said. "Please go ahead."

Shizune smiled. "No need to apologize. It's normal to be on edge."

Hinata perched on the bench closest to them, her neck craned to watch Shizune work. Gaara, after a moment of deliberation, did the same, but his observation of Shizune was much more disinterested than the attention he fixed on Itachi.

Shizune's chakra sank into Itachi's temple, and Itachi's eyes half-closed. "No new bleeding or swelling," she noted. "Pressure okay. Have you had any headaches, dizziness, memory difficulty? Confusion or disorientation?"

"I do have a headache," answered Itachi. "It is constant, but low-level. Tolerable."

Shizune hummed, even as her chakra shrank to a tiny point and intensified. "The nerves are still sensitive. Does this feel any better?"

"It does. Thank you."

"Your ribs are holding up," said Shizune, giving him a final warm smile. "Nothing strenuous, if you can help it. I'll have Kuri check up on you later." She looked up at Kakashi. "What about you?"

Kakashi stacked his reports, pushing them off to the side. "I'm fine," he said.

She scowled, advancing on him. Medic-nin never seemed to take him seriously when he said that. "Hold still," she said, lifting a green-glowing hand to his broken arm. "I'm going to check you over."

"Go ahead," said Kakashi, though Shizune didn't care for his permission.

"The bone is healing nicely." Her chakra whispered along Kakashi's arm, down his side, and hovered over his abdomen. She frowned. "Careful with these," she warned. "I brought down the bruising yesterday ad cleared out the old blood, but any abrupt movements and you'll bleed again." She moved on, prodding at his knee both with her hands and her chakra. "Any stiffness or tenderness?"

"It's a little sore," Kakashi admitted.

"Ice it a couple times a day," Shizune directed, turning. Shisui passed her a thin stack of folders - patient charts - and she scribbled something illegible on the topmost sheet. "Take it easy, but you should recover full mobility."

"Am I cleared?" Kakashi asked, sitting up. Her lips pursed, but she didn't stop him.

"You can do paperwork," she said, "but nothing more strenuous. I'm keeping you here for observation for another day."

"There's a Command meeting today," Kakashi said.

"I'll think about it," said Shizune, already turning to go.

"Shizune," Kakashi said, and she glanced back. "Did you eat breakfast? We sent the kids to get some from the mess."

She gave him a wan smile. "I'll eat later. I have patients to see."

Temari and Team Byakko returned next, Naruto's exuberance tempered by the trays he balanced in his hands. He only had two trays to Temari's five and Sasuke and Sakura's three each, which was undoubtedly something he'd been outvoted on. "There's bacon!" Naruto announced, practically throwing his trays in his enthusiasm to show them, and if it weren't for Shisui's speed, said bacon would have ended up splattered over a sleeping Haku. "Oops," he said, ducking his head sheepishly at Sakura's and Sasuke's twin glares.

"Careful," Shisui admonished, raising the rescued trays higher above their heads as first Gaara, then Hinata sidled around him, lurer by the smell. "Good work, kids. Take ten. Hell, take an hour, we've got nothing better to do."

Sakura raised her hand. "Can we go outside?" she asked hopefully.

Shisui hesitated too long. "I'd rather you stay where I can see you."

"We can take care of ourselves!" Naruto objected. "We did when you and Itachi-sensei and Zabuza-sensei and the captain went to go kill the Mizukage! And we just went and got food!"

"I know," said Shisui. "Just - humor me, hmm? It's been a rough few days, and I'm not sure my blood pressure can take it if you run off now." His words were light and flew right over the heads of most of the children.

"Sure, Sensei," said Temari, effectively heading off further protests. She was just old enough to catch what Shisui wasn't saying, and in general was very useful for overall child wrangling. "We can eat in here."

"Taichou," said Itachi, drawing Kakashi's attention as he stood, reaching for his armor. "I need to see to my unit. I have not had the chance since before the mission."

"Go ahead," said Kakashi, watching with rather well-concealed envy as Itachi slipped on his bracers, and then his mask. "Final headcounts, I know."

"I will return," Itachi said with a grave nod, and took up his katana in its sheath. He dropped a hand in Sasuke's hair as he strode out.

Sasuke watched him go with ill-disguised dismay until Naruto's elbow caught him in the ribs in the process of grabbing a breakfast tray. "Watch it," he snapped, jerking backwards into Sakura, who overbalanced and toppled into Haku.

Instead of jerking awake violently, as shinobi tended to do when their sleep was disturbed, Haku sighed noiselessly and opened his eyes with glum resignation as Sakura squeaked an apology. Not really asleep, then, but probably wishing he was.

Neji and Sai returned in time to join the breakfast feeding frenzy. "The commander received the message," Sai informed Shisui solemnly. "His immediate response was, 'What now?' and his official response was, 'Tell him I got it.'"

"Thank you, Hachi. You too, Ni," Shisui added, his eye twinkling in mirth. "I appreciate your diligence."

Neji's only response was a distracted nod. He, like the rest of the pack, had fixated on the food as a stray dog did a butcher's bone. Kakashi narrowed his eye, even as he accepted a tray from Shisui. "You all eat much while we were gone?" he asked, deliberately casual.

The activity paused. Nine assorted children passed glances back and forth like candy.

"Not really, sir," Temari said, clearly choosing to take one for the team.

Shisui smirked from behind her and mouthed, Rank is very important during a war. That was bullshit because Shisui was the reason that it was the captain this or the captain that every time one of the kids referred to him when officially, Kakashi's rank wasn't even captain anymore. Shisui's rank was captain. Kakashi stared back at him balefully and silently promised retribution.

"They kinda had to shut down the mess for a day cuz it caught on fire," Naruto said brightly. "They made a new one last night. We didn't eat nothing but ration bars until today!"

"Didn't eat anything," Sakura corrected absently.

Behind her, Gaara silently traded his cup of zenzai for half of Hinata's bacon.

"Hm," Kakashi said blankly.

The afternoon found Kakashi idly taking inventory of his holsters and watching with half an eye as the children practiced their acrobatics (Naruto and Sasuke), rehearsed their specialized clan taijutsu (Neji and Hinata), or flicked pebbles (Temari and Sai) or ice (Haku) for Gaara's sand to bat out of the air. Shisui perched on the edge of his pallet, legs swinging off the edge, and chewed the end of his pencil absently as he frowned at the stack of reports in his hand.

The low hum of patients and medics outside changed, a hush followed by a slight burst of sound. Kakashi had just enough time to get off the pallet and firmly on his feet before Tsunade strode in, her haori and Genma and a beleaguered Shikaku drifting in her wake. Shikaku gave him a nod. Genma flicked a two-fingered salute, quirking an ironic grin around the senbon in his mouth. The genin scattered out of Tsunade's way and piled into their corner to watch with mixed awe and wariness, but her glare was for Kakashi alone. "What do you think you're doing? Sit back down," she snapped.

Zabuza came awake with a slurred, "The fuck - ?" and scrabbled at the edge of his pallet, trying to lever himself upright.

Tsunade rounded on him. "You, shut up and stop moving. I'll deal with you next."

"Oh, it's the witch," Zabuza muttered, slumping back down scrubbing his hands over his eyes.

Tsunade stopped. She turned.

Shikaku slouched discreetly to the opposite corner from the genin, out of the blast radius, and Genma strategically stayed right where he was at the exit. From his seat on his pallet, Kakashi watched silently and with great interest.

"He's on a lot of drugs," Shisui interjected hurriedly, because he was too nice. Zabuza had just enough good sense not to keep digging his own grave. "Like, a lot of drugs. Hydromorphone, I think."

Tsunade regarded him for a moment, perhaps reaffirming his identity now that he wasn't wearing his mask. "Uchiha. Still alive. Mediocre technique, good instincts, good memory, shoddy chakra control."

"That's me," agreed Shisui cheerfully, though Tsuande was probably the only person who would ever call his chakra control shoddy.

Tsunade nodded sharply. "You'll do more work with Shizune," she said, and turned to Kakashi. Shisui opened his mouth to protest, thought better of it, and closed his mouth again. "Gods above, Hatake, every time I see you, you find a new way to get the shit kicked out of you." Her tone was harsh but her eyes a mixture of exasperated and fond.

"I try," Kakashi said modestly, shrugging out of the sling to give her more room to work.

Tsuande whacked him over the head with his patient charts. "Don't be a brat. There are children watching."

Gloomily, Kakashi wondered if that would ever stop being a threat that worked. "Shizune checked me out thirty minutes ago."

"My condolences to her, then," Tsunade muttered. Her chakra was bright and warm and tickled as she pressed it against his head, and he wrinkled his nose to keep from sneezing. "Take that off," Tsunade murmured, tapping the edge of his mask with one finger.

Minutely, Kakashi shook his head.

Tsunade huffed. "Brat," she said again, too quiet for anyone but Kakashi to hear. Then, louder, "Lie down. Shizune's been on duty or on call for five days straight. She doesn't have the chakra to finish fixing you up."

"And you?" Kakashi asked, mild enough to hide the hopefulness.

Tsunade-sama snorted. "I need you in one piece for the Command meeting. Lie down, I said."

It was great to feel wanted. It was probably his sunny personality.

Still, he hesitated. Tsunade rolled her eyes expressively and turned and yanked down the canvas wall to cut off the curious stares of nine shinobi children. "It's like you don't want me to heal you," she grumbled, glaring at him until he lay back.

"Sorry," Kakashi said meekly, and gave her his best pitiful look. It had worked on her when he was four, but now it earned him an unimpressed stare. Time had not touched her; she looked the same now as when she used come around his house for dinner with Jiraiya and his father between missions, when she laughed and swatted his father when he tried to get Kakashi to call her Baa-san. Those memories were distant and foggy now, like most of his memories of his father. By the time his father died, she was long gone.

This was the same kunoichi who'd been revolutionized the entire institution of medic-nin before she was twenty, who was feared for her strength and her skill, the legacy of the Shodaime Hokage and of the Senju. Here, now, with iryou-chakra glowing at her fingertips and a scowl of concentration on her face, she was far removed from the shell of a woman that had spent the past evening frozen, blind and deaf to the world around her as her own mind snared her in its grip. The same grief that clung to her then still clouded her eyes, but instead of merely the ghosts haunting her, she was the ghost now, drifting in and out of life.

"There," Tsunade said brusquely. "You can lose the knee brace, but keep the arm cast and the sling; the bone's still fragile. Congratulations, you're back on light duty. Shikaku will fill you in. Now," she turned on Zabuza, who flinched, still half asleep and mostly out of it. "You."

"Oh, fuck," Zabuza mumbled reflexively.

Kakashi pushed himself upright as Shikaku sauntered around to meet him. The shadows seemed to drag at his form, draping off his clothes and tracing dark circles around his eyes. "You look like shit," he remarked.

Shikaku dragged a hand down the side of his face. "I know," he said, the words muffled. "I've been putting out fires since you left. We took some damage from the counterattack, and the Hanran was a mess with the majority of their top brass on the assassination team. Half the city's wrecked, and you know Terumi will find a way to pin it on us."

Kakashi rubbed the mask over his chin. "I may have antagonized her. Slightly," he admitted. Shikaku stared at him, unsurprised and droll. Tsunade snorted but didn't look up from her work on Zabuza. "In all fairness, she had just tried to have me killed. That'll be a point for us. Violation of the treaty."

"There's several outcomes she'll be angling for, given how the circumstances played out," Shikaku mused, his eyes sharp and distant. "She's going to want us divided, and preferably out of the Inner Village, but she seems to have given up on that. She's not going to want to feed and house our shinobi for free. In any case, we should prepare reasonable counters," he said, a frown creasing his forehead.

"We have the Old Academy," Kakashi pointed out. "We frame it as a favor to her, we can leverage something better than tents for the rest of the units."

Shikaku nodded, accepting his point. "As of now, our representatives for the joint Command meeting are you, me, Tsunade-sama - " he hesitated, glancing down at Zabuza, " - and Komorebi."

"What am I, chopped liver?" Zabuza growled. His eyes were more alert now, his voice less foggy.

Tsunade flicked the side of his head to his indignant yelp. "It was," she snapped. "Again. Maybe you don't believe when I tell you that you do actually need it."

"I was stabbed, I didn't fall on my own sword," Zabuza hissed. "You need me when you're dealing with Mei. She's off-balance when I'm there."

"I'm not convinced you should even be walking," Tsunade's fired back, but she glanced at Shikaku.

"He's right," Shikaku admitted. "Having someone there who understands the way she thinks raises the probability of a positive outcome."

"Don't tell me about the probability." Tsunade's chakra pulsed, and Zabuza craned his neck to watch, alarmed, as if this was the time Tsunade was finally going to murder him on the operating table. "You're fine, you big baby. Shizune wasted all her damn chakra on you." Her chakra winked out as she dusted her hands off, planting them on her hips as she swivelled to regard all three of her shinobi. "Momochi, you're coming with the joint Command delegation."

"Joy," muttered Zabuza. Tsunade glared at him, and he grudgingly amended it to, "Yes, sir," and leaned away from her. Kakashi idly wondered if the drugs were still in his system or if Tsunade had burned them out.

"You two get some rest before the Command meeting," Tsunade ordered. "Three hours' sleep, minimum. Shizune will give you the location." She strode to the dividing wall, swept the canvas up and out of the way, and stopped dead. Her mouth twitched up in a reluctant smile.

Shisui had somehow managed to get all nine of the children - even Naruto - in a rough circle, cross-legged on the floor with their eyes closed in meditation. Kakashi watched nonplussed, and glanced over at Genma. Still hovering near the entrance with his hands in his pockets and his senbon in his mouth, the other man shrugged. The consensus: Shisui was a strange creature but an excellent babysitter.

Shisui was also unfortunate in that given the inherent details of his position, he amassed five times as much paperwork as even Kakashi. He attended the Hanabi-ha Command meeting still skimming through reports and left with his mask still buried in the scrolls and loose papers.

Nevertheless, Kakashi would have traded places with him in a heartbeat if it meant he wouldn't have to participate in the Joint Command meeting.

Kakashi was never a fan of broadcasting his weaknesses, but he liked to think he wore it well. Mei's eyes flicked to Kakashi's sling as he entered, and then his face, as if verifying that it was indeed Kakashi with the broken arm, and then gave him a slow, predatory smile. Kakashi ignored the scrutiny and the smile, settling into the chair at Tsunade's right, directly across from Ao, and Shikaku took the seat on Tsunade's other side. Zabuza crossed his arms over his chest, staying on his feet behind Kakashi as Komorebi took up a guard position at Shikaku's shoulder.

Mei folded her hands on the table in front of her, her face melting into a polite mask. "I'll cut to the chase, if you don't mind, Tsunade-sama," she said. Ao scowled ever so slightly.

"Fine by me," Tsunade said curtly, eyes narrowing until only a glint of amber was visible.

Mei nodded to her captain, the one Zabuza had some kind of mutual hate relationship with, who set a large cardboard box on the table with great reluctance and opened it. Inside were stacks of hitai-ate, marked with the Kiri symbol.

Tsunade stared, her face stony but her displeasure obvious. "What is this?" she asked dangerously.

Mei wasn't visibly smug. Instead, for a blink of an eye, she looked tired. Kakashi studied Fukaya, but the commander's face was carved from stone.

Mei steepled her fingers, resting her chin on her fingertips. "Kiri's shinobi forces are depleted, and many of our shinobi will be tied up sorting out the new administration and dealing with the loyalists. The battles throughout the Inner Village and the Lower City have caused immeasurable damage to our infrastructure, and we don't have the manpower to repair it all before the worst of winter hits."

"What," Tsunade repeated deliberately, "is this?"

Her anger was palpable, stirring beneath her facade of calm. It sent a prickle of warning down Kakashi's spine and sparked against his chakra. Beside him, he could feel Komorebi's subtle shift from guarded to poised though the assassination specialist did not move, and Ao's visible eye sharpened in response.

"This is an offer," Mei replied, unruffled by the stifling tension. "I could use the shinobi. Your shinobi could use the protection Kiri's symbol would give you."

"We have an alliance, one whose terms I expect you to uphold. We will not join Kiri," Tsunade growled.

"Nor would I expect you to," Mei said smoothly. "This would be a temporary arrangement. You cannot expect to march against Konoha immediately. Take up the Kiri hitai-ate for a year, maybe two. You will have an outpost to operate autonomously, from which you can continue Hanabi-ha missions as long as Kiri is not implicated."

From the thunderous expression on her face, Tsunade was not impressed. "You expect me to split my shinobi between some outpost in the middle of the ocean and your village, when you have already tried to assassinate my second in command and three of my captains?"

"This is trust," Mei hissed. "Giving you our symbol is a risk to us, as well. You would continue to command your shinobi as you have. You would keep the profits from and have the option to accept or decline missions. You can continue to work towards your goal while giving your shinobi as well as mine a chance to recover. Kirigakure cannot support your war when we are still weakened from our own."

Tsunade met Mei's glare with her own. The chances of a fight actually breaking out were slim, but Kakashi let his chakra crackle closer to the surface, just in case. He exchanged a quick glance of understanding with Shikaku - if it came to it, the other man would trap Mei and Kakashi would neutralize Ao.

"Uzu no Kuni," Tsunade snapped at last.

Mei's eyes widened, then narrowed. "What about it?"

Tsunade crossed her arms across her chest. "I want it as the Hanabi-ha outpost. And the Hoteimaru."

Mei leaned back. Strategically, Uzu was the largest, and given its proximity to the mainland, arguably the most important outpost Kiri had - to say nothing of the value of Kiri's warships. Only five remained afloat, only three firmly in Hanran hands. Capitulating to a demand like that would be -

"Fine."

\- suspicious.

Tsunade actually paused at that.

"Have your outpost on Uzu. Make use of the Hoteimaru," said Mei, letting just a little of her fatigue show. Calculated. "Tsunade-sama, I want this to work. We've intertwined the fates of our people, for better or worse, and we know too many of each other's secrets to move against the other. Accept the offer. It will benefit us both."

Shinobi were good at discerning truth from lies. Shinobi were also good liars. Silence hung heavy in the room as Tsunade scrutinized the other woman, searching for tells.

"Fine," said Tsunade at last, her voice frigid. "Keep in mind that should you choose to double-cross us, Hanabi-ha will have very little left to lose. If that comes to pass, we will make damn sure that all of Kirigakure goes down with us - and it will not recover." She whirled, storming towards the door. "On me," she snapped, and Komorebi and Shikaku peeled away to fall in behind her. Zabuza raised a sardonic eyebrow at Mei and rolled his eyes expansively at Kakashi.

"We'll send someone by to pick those up," Kakashi said, nodding at the box of hitai-ate, and whisked after Tsunade.

In light of Mei's rather unexpected proposal, Kakashi was in and out of both Hana-ha and Joint Command meetings for the better part of the next three days. Tsunade flat out refused to move her shinobi off Kiri's main island until spring, but for all her talk of trust, Mei didn't like the idea of the majority of a rogue nation wintering in her capital while it was still rebuilding. Mei requested a Hana-ha medical detachment to assist with the overhaul of Kiri's comparatively archaic hospital system, but Tsunade guarded her iryou-nin fiercely and suspiciously. Kakashi understood that slogging through the politics was necessary, but the reality was standing behind Tsunade's shoulder for hours on end as she and Mei circled and sniped at each other.

Moving into Kiri's Old Academy was, by comparison, a nice break. Itachi and Zabuza had their Units' own respective transitions to oversee, so Kakashi dressed down to a bandana and flak jacket and a light henge and went to join Shisui and the assorted children in their temporary camp next to a burned-out fallen tree. Ash and bark crunched under his feet as he made his way through the training ground, and he was nearly invisible among the rest of the shinobi in adjoining camps.

"Ne, are we gonna get our own rooms?" Naruto's voice was unmistakable, bright and carefree amidst the devastated clearing.

"No," Shisui answered patiently. "All three of your teams are going to have to share space. The captain's marked off the smallest library for our use, so the nine of you will share the adjoining storeroom and office."

"There's a library?" Sakura asked, thrilled. "Shi, don't you dare set this one on fire."

Sasuke made an annoyed or possibly disappointed tch.

"There are three in the Old Academy," answered Shisui, his voice amused. "I'm afraid the one we'll be using only has a dozen or so cases."

Kakashi rounded the bend to find Shisui, children, and assorted weapons and tools scattered across the clearing around the remains of a small campfire. He lifted his free hand in a casual wave as Shisui looked up.

"Ah, Hatake-taichou," Shisui greeted, and nine pairs of genin eyes swung around to regard him warily, curiously, or apathetically.

Kakashi rocked back on his feet, slouching to a less intimidating height. "Who's ready to go?" He asked. "I'll take the first group over now." Nine underaged genin accompanying the Captain of Covert Intelligence to the Old Academy would attract unwanted attention, and Kakashi was presently disguised as a regular jounin.

Sai raised his hand. "Team Genbu is ready to depart," he volunteered. His pack rested against his leg, as tall as a sleepy-looking Gaara sitting cross-legged at his side. Hinata tilted her face at Kakashi and managed a nod of agreement before she ducked her head, as if her eyes were skittering away. None of them were wearing the bone-masks, which made this an increasingly rare occurrence, but bandages swathed Hinata's eyes to hide her kekkei-genkai from view.

"Good," said Kakashi, giving Shisui a nod before settling his gaze expectantly on the team. "Let's go."

In the interest of avoiding his own troops more than Hanran or loyalist - or just Kiri, now - Kakashi chose a path that meandered through the edges of the village. Besides the thoroughfare, these were the areas hit hardest by the fighting, with scorched roof tiles and pavers torn up from the ground. He took his time, in deference to the kids' short legs and so he could examine the streets around them as they went. Not many people were outdoors, but in the windows, he made out the indistinct silhouettes of the buildings' inhabitants, moving on with their lives despite the unrest outside. A small cell of Kiri shinobi eyed them suspiciously as they passed the furniture store they had commandeered but made no move to challenge them.

"Hey! You there."

…or not.

The three children tucked themselves behind him without prompting. Kakashi appraised the approaching Kiri trio. Chuunin, probably, because Kiri had too few jounin or tokujo to spare one on guard duty at the edge of the city. Their clothes were battered but not patched, and at least the one in the lead carried himself with the brashness Kakashi had come to associate with shinobi born in one of the upper castes.

He glanced down at himself. Standard Kiri greys - the mass produced kind - flak jacket, cast and sling, and not much else. With his hair wrangled firmly under his bandana, the bandages wrapped over his actual mask, and his chakra reined back, Kakashi supposed he could have passed for a Hanran chuunin. Even a high caste Kiri chuunin wouldn't dare call out a low caste jounin - at least, not on purpose and not without painful consequences.

The chuunin glanced him up and down derisively. "Are you one of the traitors?"

Strong words for someone whose side had just lost the war.

"No, just a sellsword," Kakashi said amiably. He tucked his hands in his pockets, shifting his weight away from combat-ready and more towards relaxed. "We're on our way to the Old Academy, where we've been stationed for the time being. Hana Division, Unit 15; identification Hana-An-4696."

His answer did not appease the lead chuunin. "Nuke-nin," he said, the shadow of a scowl creeping across his face. His teammates spread out on either side of him, cutting off easy access to Kakashi's chosen path.

"Kiri must be half nuke-nin by now," Kakashi drawled. "I'm not trying to pick a fight. Just trying to get to where I need to go."

"No," the chuunin snapped. "All of you will stay right here until your identities are verified."

Kakashi glanced back at his tagalongs. Sai's face was wiped clean of emotion, his dark eyes particularly eerie as he watched the chuunin. Gaara slouched just behind his shoulder, predatory by comparison, and Hinata twisted her hands together as she rocked on her feet uncertainly. Kakashi didn't have a lot of options here that would avoid causing a diplomatic incident, or one that would risk undue exposure for the kids, so he said, "Fine. We'll wait."

Kakashi didn't mind waiting, and from their enthusiastic imitation of stone statues, neither did Team Genbu. Gaara sidled sideways the half meter necessary for him to move out of the shadows and into the sunlight, where he slid down until he was sitting cross-legged against the brick wall of a battered bakery with his eyes hooded. Hinata, her hands clutching her forearms in her sleeves, and Sai, who stared unblinking at the chuunin and his team, stayed where they were on their feet. Whether deliberate or unconscious, their positions gave Gaara a clear shot at the other team.

Hinata's head swivelled just a few degrees to Kakashi's right, a deliberate warning. Gaara's eyes opened just a little wider, suddenly much more alert though he didn't straighten from his slouch. Seconds later, Kakashi heard the feather-light footsteps approaching from behind the chuunin.

The other man turned, but rather than relief, first fear, then resentment twisted his face before he wrestled his expression under control. "Sir," he bit out. The rest of his team came to attention behind him.

Higata Beniko all but ignored them as she drew level with the small assembly. She nodded curtly at Kakashi and said, "Commander."

The chuunin's face drained of color rapidly as he glanced between Kakashi and Higata. Kakashi didn't need his reaction or even awareness of the instruments of corporal punishment littering the Village to know that Kiri punished insubordination more harshly than Konoha did.

"Captain," Kakashi drawled in response. He and Team Genbu had just passed the fifteen minute mark on their detainment.

"My apologies for the inconvenience," Higata said stiffly, watching him like one might eye a potentially rabid raccoon. Perhaps she was thinking of just a few days earlier, when she tried to murder him in the catacombs after the Mizukage's defeat. "The loyalist shinobi haven't been briefed on the situation yet. Or the identification codes."

"I wasn't aware you would be called," Kakashi said, sliding his eye over to the chuunin. "It was not my intention to cause a…" he trailed off thoughtfully, "...disturbance."

Higata pinned the hapless chuunin with a stare just shy of a glare.

"I assume we can be on our way," Kakashi said. Gaara took that as his cue to uncoil, rising to his feet with a sated air. Kakashi discreetly shot him a wary glance.

"Of course," said Higata. "But, Commander - " she said as Kakashi paused. "I must recommend that you wear an indication of your rank, to prevent future misunderstandings."

"I'll take it into consideration," Kakashi said mildly, then jerked his chin at his borrowed waifs.

Sai turned away from the Kiri shinobi dispassionately, and once he had, Hinata followed. Gaara cocked his head, the bloodlust brightening in his eyes. It was gone with one languid blink, lasting only long enough to send an ice-cold jolt of adrenaline down Kakashi's spine. Gaara sauntered past him nonchalantly and for a moment Kakashi could only stare.

Good gods. Was this parenting? How did Shisui manage it when he was practically still a kid himself?

There was nothing to do, then, but to make sure the kids didn't get lost on the way to the Old Academy.

"Kyuu?" Sai murmured.

"Left," said Hinata without hesitation.

Sai turned left. Gaara glanced back over his shoulder at Kakashi, his eyes some mixture of amused and tolerant, as if sharing a joke with him.

Kakashi didn't understand children at all.

The advance teams had restored the lights in the Old Academy, including in the hallways, but Kakashi had chosen the third library as the headquarters for his pack in part for the door that led directly to the outside from the north wall. Neji opened the door as they approached and stood aside to let them in. He scrutinized Hinata as she passed. Hinata shrank back, scurrying into the library and nearly tripping on Sai's heels.

"Careful," said Shisui, which was drowned out by Naruto's shriek of - and Sakura's much quieter, "You're late!"

Shisui eyed the children up and down, his brow furrowing when he could see nothing visibly amiss. He looked up. "What happened to you, Taichou? You guys left first."

"The climate was more hostile than expected," Kakashi responded, managing to keep from slumping by sheer force of will. He'd slept maybe six hours in the past two days though he was still recovering, and his fatigue was making itself known by causing the weight of his head to grow exponentially with each passing minute. "No trouble on your end?"

Shisui shook his head, "Nothing. Got lucky, I guess."

Kakashi hummed agreement, tugging down the bandages from over his mouth and nose.. "I like what you've done with the place," he said.

Shisui grimaced. "It's never going to be big enough for us all to have individual rooms partitioned out in here, but at least this way we can have only two of us in each. The kids are all crammed together in the stockroom, but I don't think they mind too much. It'll just be bedrolls for us until we can get something better, but the kids are using some of the empty bookshelves as bunk beds."

"Huh," said Kakashi.

"Yeah, I don't know," Shisui admitted. "Pretty sure they're light enough not to break the shelves as long as they're careful."

Kakashi meandered to the doorway leading to the stockroom, and Shisui kept pace with him, following at his shoulder. The bookshelves did make for convincing bunk beds once the extra shelves had been removed, if he squinted and let the sleep deprivation blur his vision.

"Roku, Go, start taking the shelves off those ones in the corner," Temari directed from the center of the chaos. "Ichi, can you grab the ones on the top?" Behind her, Hinata stacked the spare shelves as Neji hauled a bookshelf into place.

Kakashi, as was his habit, conducted a lazy head count that ended in his second adrenaline rush for the day because there were only eight small children heads bobbing around the room. "Shisui," he said deliberately, even as his eyes flitted over the room a second and third time. "Where's Sasuke?

"Oh, him," said Shisui, blasé enough to assuage Kakashi's panic. "Itachi took him off somewhere. They'll be back later."

There was nowhere safer for Sasuke than with Itachi. Kakashi turned away from the doorway, tipping his head up to examine the ceiling. Shisui caught his line of sight and said, "You going to do a seal?"

"Likely at least three," Kakashi answered wryly, ducking out of his sling. "A seal for silence, a trap seal for security, and an alarm seal. I know how to do those, at least, but it'll take some time. I need your blood. I need blood from everyone."

Shisui brightened. "I'll go get some from Z. No need to wait for me, Taichou!"

Kakashi watched the door slam shut behind Shisui and belatedly realized that an unsuspecting Zabuza was about to be ambushed for his blood. But that wasn't Kakashi's problem anymore, so he went to find his sealing supplies so he could start mixing the ink.

Shisui returned fifteen minutes later with three vials of blood and a very self-satisfied prowl. "Got Itachi and Sasuke-kun too," he said unnecessarily, handing them over.

Kakashi stared blankly at the vials in his hand. Teenagers.

Kakashi's audience for drawing the seals was everyone present, the kids sprawling across the room flat on their backs to watch him work. Seals were a language Kakashi understood enough of to realize he didn't know much about it at all. Still, as the Yondaime's student, he knew how to build a seal up, to connect the component parts and balance them to keep the entire thing stable, and this particular seal he had used enough that it'd have been burned into his memory even without the Sharingan. He painted silently, efficiently, and lines of ink spiderwebbed across the ceiling, crisscrossing with each other as they trailed spindly arms down the walls.

Below him, members of his audience left and returned again. Sai and Haku passed around food to Shisui and the rest of the kids. Naruto fell asleep and stayed asleep until a particularly loud snore prompted Sakura to plant an elbow in his ribs and he woke with an indignant yelp.

Kakashi stripped off his half-gloves for better fine control, tossing them down into one of the rooms Shisui had partitioned off. The challenge of this configuration was not only drawing the seals, but engineering them to coexist, and with luck, interlock for better integration of their individual mechanisms. His sensei had always had a near-maniacal light in his eyes on the third night of his sealing benders, and though Kakashi didn't quite have the same passion for fuinjutsu as Minato-sensei, he at least appreciated the artistry.

At last, he crouched upside down on the ceiling next to the nexus of his bastardized creation. The scent of the ink and blood smothered him even with his mask, and his fingers would be trembling with exhaustion if he let them. He didn't need a handseal sequence to activate this one, only Ram to help him concentrate his chakra. His chakra sparked at his fingertips, jumping to the seal that drank it in hungrily. "Fuin!" Kakashi growled, and shoved.

The array lit up in brilliant white-blue, crackling across the ceilings and darting down the walls. The sheer force of the chakra blasted against his face, and he squinted against the glare as muffled sounds of surprise and curiosity rose from his audience. Chakra fizzled along the surface of the seal, and Kakashi caught his breath. This particular seal wouldn't blow up in his face if it wasn't stable enough, but it'd burn the ink up and he'd still have to start over.

The seal buzzed ominously. Abruptly, it dimmed, the light from the chakra fading as it was absorbed by the seal. Kakashi fell more than jumped off the ceiling, sending little jolts of pain down his mostly-no-longer-broken arm.

The kids stared up at the seal, transfixed. "Did it work?" Sakura asked, hushed.

It did, in fact. Probably. "It worked," Kakashi said aloud. He was probably due for a string of bad luck now.

"That was cool, Taichou, but maybe put your sling back on before Shizune-sensei senses that you ditched it and comes to murder us both," Shisui suggested. "Kids - everyone except Shichi-kun, go to bed, I know you want to. In fact, Shichi-kun, you go to bed too, just don't sleep."

"I'm going to sleep too," muttered Kakashi, for Shisui's ears. Black smeared on his hands, but at this precise moment, he didn't give a damn. The floor wobbled beneath him as he made a beeline for the makeshift rooms on the opposite side of the space. "Wake me up if someone attacks."

"Free time, Taichou? It must be nice not to have ten thousand reports to sift through," Shisui said gloomily. "I'll wake you up for the meeting this evening "

Leaving a Zabuza restless from his medical leave behind to watch all nine of the children during a partial Command meeting perhaps not the best idea. As the sun began sinking beneath the horizon, Kakashi pressed his chakra into the lock seal, pushed the door to the library open, and found Zabuza lounging against the wall in the common area with a feral kind of amusement. The nine genin scattered on the floor around him were all absorbed in copies a very particular black book.

Shisui followed Kakashi into the room and frowned. "Z, you gave them bingo books?"

Zabuza grinned. "What? Shit's funny, it's basically all propaganda. "The one on Ao calls him a child murderer, as if they'd care if he killed a bunch of low-caste kids."

"Z," Shisui tried again.

Zabuza ignored him. "Did you know you're in Kiri's twice, Hatake? The Konoha entry calls you a tracking and assassination specialist, and the Raijuu one calls you a melee bruiser."

"The Konoha one has your ninken in it," Sakura said, beaming. "They tried to draw them in but the pictures look nothing like them."

"It says you mastered a thousand jutsu." Temari peered up at Kakashi from under her eyelashes. "And also that you killed the Sandaime Hokage."

"It says you murdered your genin teammates!" Naruto chirped.

Zabuza's grin froze on his face.

"Does it?" said Kakashi vaguely. He hadn't read a bingo book since before the Kiri Civil War.

Temari's eyes caught on Zabuza's expression and narrowed, darting between him and her book. Naruto's mouth opened and then shut silently again when Temari nudged him forcefully. Gaara's eyes widened from their half-lidded norm, drifting slowly to first Zabuza, then Kakashi, with interest.

"Okay, let's maybe pack those up," said Shisui hurriedly. "Haku, maybe you and Ni could grab us dinner - "

"No, it's all right," Kakashi said, consciously relaxing his posture to something more unthreatening as Sai and Hinata exchanged worried glances. "Everything is written in those books for a reason. Either you learn something about the shinobi or the Village who composed the entry."

"Right," said Shisui, recovering gracefully. "Very true. Yorozoku kids, we may as well get dinner now anyways. Grab what you need and we'll go."

An almost silent stampede spilled out the door with impressive alacrity. The door clicked shut behind them and the seals reengaged. Kakashi swivelled towards Zabuza.

Zabuza watched, tensed like he thought Kakashi might go after him right in the middle of their library.

"What did you think would happen when you gave the kids bingo books?" Kakashi asked lightly, sliding his hands into his pockets. He tipped his head up to study the seal on the ceiling, baring his throat to make it clear he had no intention of attacking. "There are things in there they aren't ready to know. Imagine if they threw Nara Shikaku's entry at him so carelessly."

"Yeah," Zabuza admitted gruffly after a pause. "That'd be a fuckup." Still, he eyed Kakashi warily.

Kakashi squinted back at him. Zabuza's skin was sallow against the bandages swathing him forearm to neck, his eyes not quite focused. "I'll assume you're still on the drugs and your judgement's impaired," Kakashi decided magnanimously.

"I am," Zabuza ground out, jerking his head to the side roughly. "That harpy keeps shooting me up during checkups."

Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "Painkillers?"

The other man grunted, shoving to his feet. "Something about nerve damage. Can't do shit til they finish dealing with it." He shuffled across into his room, but his room was also Kakashi's room, so Kakashi followed him in.

"Did you check in with your unit yet?" Kakashi asked, settling down on his bedroll and leaning back. The shelves dug into the knobs of his spine, and he tipped his head back to rest on one of them.

"Yes, sir." Zabuza smirked at Kakashi's reflexive eyeroll. "They're all shacked up in the first floor classrooms. They'll sort it out, Nishigawa took care of rooming assignments. Says he'll do food and shower rotations tonight. Was that guy a paperwork ninja? He likes this shit more than fighting."

Kakashi hummed, propping his elbow on his bent knee. "Don't know, didn't meet him until eight months ago. Maybe, if he retired from active duty after making tokujo or jounin. Good thing he knows what he's doing - you're hopeless."

"Fuck off," Zabuza retorted companionably. He lifted Kubikiribocho off its shelf, studying the ragged blade morosely. It looked a little better than it had immediately after they left the catacombs, a little bigger, but still lacked at least half its original length.

Kakashi wrinkled his nose when Zabuza's hot-metal bloodscent hit the air. The other shinobi pressed his forearm against the broadsword's jagged edge, and the sword drank in the blood greedily. "Maa, Shizune will have your head when she sees that," he drawled, but Zabuza ignored him. "You give your shinobi the hitai-ate yet?" Kakashi asked.

Zabuza had never stopped wearing his. He grunted. "Yeah. Don't think they're too happy about it. Some of 'em decided they'd wear it but didn't wanna wear the Kiri symbol on their heads." He swung Kubikiribocho back up onto its shelf once the cut on his arm had clotted. "I don't give a shit. Least this way they don't look as much like a pack of mercenaries."

Kakashi had sealed away his Leaf hitai-ate the night before he left Tetsu, but taking another Village's symbol felt like a step firmly into betrayal. He grimaced. "What about Itachi? His unit?"

Zabuza shrugged. "Haven't seen much of him. Past couple days he's always been with his little weed of a brother or that woman - the jounin. Something Akaba. Akuba?"

"Mayu Akiba. That's his Second." Kakashi let his eye drift closed.

A disgusted huff. "Kami, Hatake, just lie down, and go to fucking sleep," Zabuza growled. "You're making my neck hurt just looking at you."

"Wouldn't want that," Kakashi muttered.

Tsunade's quarters and the Command headquarters occupied the administrative offices on the top floor of the Old Academy. The corridor was long and empty to make it more difficult for any assassin to slip past the guards, and weak shadows dappled the floor in front of Kakashi. Genma intercepted him at the double doors, dropping out of the darkness of the rafters and landing lightly in his path. "Been outside today yet?" Genma asked, hands loose in his pockets.

Kakashi grimaced, hitching his Anbu mask to the top of his head. Not a good day, then. "Briefly," he said.

Genma nodded, touching a palm to the door to disarm the security seals for him. "Shizune's finishing up a shift in Medical. You might catch her. The commander's in his office."

"Hm," said Kakashi. Genma tossed him a casual salute and melted back to his post.

Kakashi slid the door open, delicately so the rollers wouldn't squeak, and closed it behind him, reengaging the seals with a spark of chakra.

Tsunade sat behind a heavy oak desk with her back to the windows, utterly still. A glass of water, half empty, sat on the desk just beyond her outstretched hand; the surface was otherwise bare. Dust motes drifted through the sunlight filtering in from the windows.

"Hime," said Kakashi into the resounding silence. There was no response.

He padded across the room, around the long table used for Command meetings, until he was standing at the side of the desk. Tsunade's haori had slipped half off, leaving one shoulder bare. Carefully, slowly, Kakashi reached over to tug it back into place. He straightened again, tucking his hands into his pockets, and just observed.

Sharp angles defined Tsunade's face, her specialized henge stealing only years, not hunger or the wear of war. But though her face appeared young and timeless, her eyes betrayed her age. Fatigue darkened her eyes and though she stared ahead she did not see.

"We're halfway there, Hime," he said quietly. "We're halfway home."

Words had never been enough to drag Tsunade from wherever her mind had trapped her, and today was no exception. Would Tsunade have gone ahead with the exposure therapy if she knew that this was the price for ridding herself of her hemophobia? Did she regret it?

Kakashi did.

Kakashi delivered her the Sandaime's last words - those naming her as his rightful successor. Kakashi was the one who dragged her out of her life, who pressed her to be the leader of an army she didn't want, who charged her to lead the Village that caused her immeasurable bitterness and grief. She was the fulcrum of Hanabi-ha's existence; without her, they had no legitimate challenge to Konoha's leadership. And so, because Konoha was his home and Kakashi loved it selfishly, he gave Tsunade the weight of its future.

And it broke her, just a little.

"It's nice out today," Kakashi told her, glancing out the windows. "The sun is up, and there's only a little mist up in the higher training grounds - we never had that in Konoha. It looks cold, but the sky is clear."

Kakashi ran out of words quickly - he had never been one for talking much. He watched the Village outside, the bare, spindly branches of the trees outside jutting up into the blue, and let the quiet lie unbroken.

Tsunade never stirred save for the rise and fall of her chest. Kakashi sighed silently, nudged her water glass just a little closer, and crossed the room to the adjoining door.

"Commander," he greeted, closing the door behind him.

Shikaku sent the ceiling a silent plea for patience. "What do you want?" he muttered, slumping forward over his desk. The surface was buried in paperwork - scrolls, scraps of paper, maps - and as Kakashi watched, a pen rolled into its depths and disappeared.

Kakashi grimaced sympathetically. "What's all that? Reports?"

"Yeah," Shikaku confirmed. "I'm reviewing reports and also working on determining the timeline to start moving on Konoha."

"Early start," Kakashi noted. "Anything you need from the mainland?"

Shikaku eyed him knowingly. "You have to go."

"Aa," Kakashi agreed. "It's been nearly a week, he'll know that the situation here is stable. He'll be expecting me."

"You've promised a steep price, haven't you." Again, it wasn't a question. Shikaku scrubbed a hand down his face, tossing his pen on top of the reports. His eyes followed Kakashi, dark and sharp and a little too knowing.

"I should be back within two weeks," Kakashi said instead of answering. "Send a hawk if something comes up. Take care of this place."

"Not to worry," Shikaku said, a sardonic twist in his voice. "Shiranui will guard Tsunade-sama and Momochi'll watch the children."

Kakashi rolled his eyes. "I'm so comforted."

"We'll all be fine, kid," Shikaku said, slouching back against the table. "Relax. Enjoy the break. I'll let Tsunade-sama know you left when she recovers."

Kakashi raised a hand in a lazy salute before tugging his cat-mask down and strolling out. Despite the restored lighting, shadows draped the hallways. He slipped between patches of darkness, skirting the glow from the classroom windows and doors.

He turned the corner. Three Guntai genin juggled kunai between themselves lazily, the light winking off the blades as they arched across the width of the hallway. "...better than camping outside," one drawled, flipping a blade end over end to his teammate.

"This place is haunted, man," argued his teammate, nearly fumbling the catch. "A hundred dead kids in one night and a hundred dead kids every year before that? They probably buried the bodies under this place without last rites or anything."

"You're a shinobi," scoffed the third. She nicked a kunai out of the air easily. "Try and act like - "

Kakashi flickered into the middle of their game and snagged all four of their blades out of the air. The kunoichi flinched and ducked and the two shinobi yelped, slamming back against the wall with twin thuds. The thrum of sound from inside the classroom, muffled by basic silencing seals, paused.

The kunoichi swallowed, her eyes darting from the kunai to his mask to his casted arm in its sling. Kakashi held the kunai out to her. "Not in the hallways."

The kunoichi took them gingerly. "Y-yes, sir. Sorry, sir." Kakashi turned to eye her teammates, who stammered their apologies, and held back a sigh. These genin were supposed to have a chuunin or a tokujo somewhere who was supposed to keep track of them. Kakashi wasn't supposed to have to - to parent teenaged genin. He stepped into a shunshin as the noise that came with a dozen curious shinobi spilled out to bombard the genin behind him. Once out of range, Kakashi slowed his pace to a saunter.

Movement flickered in the corner of his eye as he turned into the curved hall flush against the wall of the arena: dark hair and light armor. Itachi dropped into step beside him as he took the hallway that would lead to the pack library. He dipped his head in greeting but said nothing

Kakashi glanced at him sideways. "Where are you going? Base camp?"

"I will accompany you to the mainland," answered Itachi.

That...did not answer what he had asked. Kakashi narrowed his eye. "Will you," he said, a demand more than a question.

"Yes," Itachi said, and Kakashi stopped to face him. A flash of crimson whirled abruptly in Itachi's eyes and Kakashi's body froze of its own accord - Kakashi had not fought another Sharingan wielder in too long. Grimly, Kakashi clawed for his chakra, let it burn to Obito's eye as he smothered his betrayal, alarm, anger, surprise. But a Sharingan genjutsu was particularly hard to break and he had been caught off-guard. The genjutsu dragged him in.

"Wait, please," Itachi said urgently, holding his hands palms up and empty. The halls of the Academy had vanished around them, leaving them standing on stone ground shrouded by mist.

Kakashi's chakra seethed under his skin as he held it at bay. Itachi held himself slightly hunched, and the shadows under his eyes had deepened - but in a genjutsu, that meant nothing. "I expect you have a good reason for this, Itachi," he said, clipped.

If anything, Itachi looked even more hunted. "I apologize, Taichou," he said, his voice even but rushed, "but I needed to speak with you in absolute secrecy, where there are no eyes to see us. There is something I must tell you, and it cannot be within Kirigakure."

Kakashi's first reaction was suspicion, which immediately segued into a sort of shamed concern.

He was serious. Genjutsu or no, Kakashi studied him carefully, noting the pinched corners of his eyes, the tension in his jaw.

Itachi, gone rogue, would be nearly impossible to stop. Kakashi knew his own abilities, and he knew the chance that he would come out the victor in a battle of sheer power against Itachi, whose Mangekyo granted him a Susano'o that withstood a Bijuudama, was uncomfortably slim.

Trust was a hard thing to come by for a shinobi, and Kakashi had been burned once before. But Kakashi had put his trust in Itachi countless times - in Anbu, in those first mad days after the Fall, in the months spent building Hanabi-ha from the scattered remnants of the ousted dissidents - and though Itachi severed his ties with first his clan and then the Village for which he had done so, he had something here he would never abandon: his brother.

"What can you tell me now?" Kakashi asked at last.

"Not much," Itachi admitted, letting his arms fall to his sides. "There is no immediate threat, but it is present. I have briefed my second-in-command on my duties," he added. "She is prepared to lead the unit in my absence."

Kakashi shattered the genjutsu with a pulse of chakra. "Fine," he said. "Come."

Itachi let out a silent breath. "Thank you."

"Pack light," he said. "I plan to move quickly."

"So suddenly?" Shisui narrowed his eye.

Kakashi swiped a bloody thumb over the row of seals on his storage scroll, watching the stacks of spare kunai and shuriken appear one by one. "The situation here is stable, but we haven't received reliable intel from the mainland for many months. You reported that communication with your operatives outside of Kiri's oceans has been inconsistent." He ducked out of his sling, tossing it to the side.

"Yeah," said Shisui, drumming his fingers on the table he perched on. He shot Kakashi's discarded sling a nasty glare. "Before Houki left, he told me the majority of operatives outside Kiri had inactivated until the war ended. They need the order to reactivate afterwards. Can't intercept communication implicating Hana-ha in the Kiri Civil War if there is none."

"And you don't have immediate plans to send the order," said Kakashi, sealing his weapons away methodically.

"Well, no," Shisui admitted. "The protocol is verification in person, it's a five-step process. I figured I'd go when I finished sorting out the situation here - the intelligence community is kind of a mess, my operatives are all over the place."

"I'll do it. I have sources outside the Hana-ha network to check in with as well, and you're needed here," said Kakashi, sweeping the scroll back into a tight roll.

"Uh, and you're not?" Shisui asked incredulously.

"You and Zabuza will have things well in hand," Kakashi said, sliding his katana out of its sheath. He examined the blade, flipping it over to check for imperfections, before slipping it back in with a quiet snick. "There's going to be a quiet period here while everyone licks their wounds. It'll be like babysitting the kids, but with several thousand restless genin."

"You're really going to leave me here with Itachi and Zabuza to babysit an entire army?" Shisui demanded. "Does that sound like the best idea to you?"

"Itachi's coming with me, actually," Kakashi said dryly, "so it's more like just you and Zabuza."

Shisui's face wiped abruptly blank. "Itachi's going with you?"

"I'm surprised he didn't tell you," Kakashi said, his voice mild, turning to meet his eye. Shisui was Itachi's closest confidante, the one who understood Itachi as much as anyone could. Kakashi's chakra roiled uneasily in his chest, and he turned away to hide it in the guise of sealing a stack of reports into a scroll.

"So that's why he's in there letting the kids climb all over him," Shisui said, the words coming slow and uncertain.

Kakashi hummed noncommittally and flipped his katana up over his shoulder and into its harness. "And Zabuza?"

"Well, he's there too because one of the medics gave him too much muscle relaxant and now he can't really move. Shizune-sensei's on a warpath," Shisui said. "He discharged himself in protest and made Haku drag him back here. The kids are supposed to be guarding him - they've been getting bored."

"Tsunade-hime is due to negotiate for training grounds tomorrow. Take the kids out to start their training." Kakashi's Konoha-issued armor sat comfortably on his shoulders, pale against his old faded blacks, and he felt more himself than he ever had in Kiri's bulky uniforms. He adjusted his bracer and snagged his sling as an afterthought as he ducked out of the room.

"Hai," said Shisui, hopping down from the table to follow, and nearly crashed into Kakashi's back when he stopped abruptly.

"Maa, Itachi," Kakashi said.

Itachi looked up. Itachi looked up from behind the rather sizeable fire burning merrily in a large cauldron in the center of the room.

Sasuke beamed. He held a tomato on a skewer over the flames, conspicuous among the rest of the pack's marshmallows jockeying for space. Smoke curled up to the ceiling, crawling out between the door and the doorframe. Naruto's marshmallow had caught fire, but he didn't seem to notice.

"Fire on cardboard, cousin, in a library?" Shisui raised an amused eyebrow at Itachi, who shrugged elegantly.

"This is very irresponsible," Kakashi said, eyeing the mess of white fluff, chocolate, and crackers scattered on the loose cardboard laid down almost like an afterthought. "Haku, you should know better."

Temari's eyes widened, but Haku smiled angelically. "I'm sorry, Kakashi-san. I assumed Zabuza-san would stop us if it was something we shouldn't do."

"The hell, kid?" Zabuza grumped, one arm thrown over his eyes as he sprawled flat on the floor. "I'm a fucking invalid. Uchiha's the supervising adult."

"Itachi-sensei is not an adult," Sai pointed out. Beside him, Gaara drew his skewer back and gnawed his marshmallow gravely.

"In that case, I will relinquish my duties to your Juu-sensei," Itachi said, rising to his feet in one smooth moment. "Taichou, is it time?"

Kakashi wanted to say no. Itachi was sixteen years old and captain of not just an Anbu team, but a war unit of some five hundred shinobi. He deserved more opportunities like this - to be a teenager, setting fires where he shouldn't and eating food with a negative nutritional value.

Fuck it. Kakashi was a commander. He could do whatever he wanted.

So Kakashi said, "Not yet. Tonight," and leaned back against the wall. He jerked his head at Shisui. "Go on," he said. "Supervise."

"Yes, sir," said Shisui cheerfully. "Kyuu-chan, pass me a skewer. I need to make sure this process is safe for you kids."

"Sensei, look!" said Sakura, her eyes as bright as her voice as she held up an unidentifiable mess of sugary goop for Itachi to inspect. "I made the sandwich thing!"

"Indeed," Itachi agreed, settling back down. "Perhaps I will make one as well."

"I don't know how you can eat that," Sasuke said, wrinkling his nose. "It's got to be like ninety-nine percent sugar. It's disgusting."

"You're eating a vegetable because you like it," Naruto argued, nearly planting his charred marshmallow in an unruffled Gaara's face as he gestured. "You're weird!"

"Tomatoes are actually a kind of fruit," Sasuke sniffed with great dignity.

"Would you like some chocolate with that?" Sai offered. "This one is supposed to be less sweet."

Temari recoiled. "No, Hachi," she said, intercepting the chocolate. There had been no danger; Sasuke had frozen with disgust painted across his face.

"I read that chocolate pairs well with fruits," Sai said blankly. "Is this information incorrect?"

"When the fruit is a tomato, it does not," said Sakura empathetically.

Neji plucked Hinata's skewer out of her hands, replacing her black-spotted, uneven lump with his own perfectly toasted marshmallow. He bit into it vengefully, ignoring Hinata's hesitant attempts to switch them back.

Naruto's goopy chunk of coal dropped on to the cardboard, and flames sprang up with his muffled yelp. Shisui lunged for it, nudging Sasuke back when he jerked too close to the cauldron, but Haku was faster. He blasted a handful of ice, burying the fire in a layer of frost and showering Naruto in bits of ice crystal.

"Looks dangerous," Kakashi observed.

"Not to worry," said Shisui, neatly catching his dropped skewer before it hit the ground. "This has been an emergency preparedness drill." He paused. "We passed."

"More marshmallows!" Temari said cheerfully, tossing a bag across to Neji. The gaping hole torn in the plastic rained soft candies down into Gaara and Naruto's hair though Sai managed to duck out of the way, and Neji plucked it out of the air. With an air of tolerance more than resentment, Neji impaled a marshmallow on a fresh skewer and handed it to Hinata. Haku reached over to take the bag next, trading a wrapped bar of chocolate for it.

"Me, me," Naruto demanded, reaching sticky hands for the chocolate. Haku passed him a stack of three, and Naruto crowed.

Kakashi shrugged back into his sling to let the ache in his arm abate, indulging himself in this fleeting moment of contentment. The kids' faces practically glowed, open and truly carefree for the first time since perhaps the winter in San's forest - even Temari, who worried over the rest as though they were all her younger siblings; even Sai, who fixated on objectives and calculations every waking moment of his day. Even Shisui and Itachi, who each carried the weight and the hope of Hana-ha despite their youth and the horrors they had survived.

"Hey, Hatake. You squirrelly Konoha sap. You soft tree-hugging bastard."

It was like Zabuza could smell emotion - and was allergic to anything that wasn't bloodlust.

Kakashi glanced down. "You're calling me names. When you're in that kind of condition. Doesn't sound smart."

"You won't do shit to me, the yuki-onna'd take your head off," Zabuza said, hauling himself up to slump against Kakashi's wall, but his narrowed eyes betrayed his uncertainty.

Kakashi smiled brightly. "Are you sure?"

Zabuza paused. He considered. He retreated. "I'm on a lot of fucking drugs."

Kakashi reached down to pat his head absently, ignoring the irritated floppy-limbed swat Zabuza aimed at him. "That you are," he agreed.

For a long pause, the two of them just watched the makeshift campfire. Zabuza said, "I'd've gotten the shit kicked out of me if I even touched sugary crap like that."

Kakashi slid a sideways glance at him. "Sounds like you had a shit sensei. Or handler, if that's what you called them."

"Kiri had no idea what the fuck to do with me," Zabuza drawled, just a slight slur in his words to suggest he might not be in complete control of his facilities. "Fucking upstart mongrel who massacred high caste kids with the low caste. Kept me in the Academy half the time to finish book learning and gave me to a jounin handler the rest of the time. Senzaki Ao was my first handler - and the only one I ever called sensei." He bared his teeth in an entirely humorless smile. "I learned better, after that."

"What did you call the others?"

"Asshole."

Kakashi snorted. Zabuza's grin turned into something a little more genuine.

Gaara solemnly gave Sai a smashed cracker smothered in marshmallow fluff, who examined it as if he didn't know what he could possibly do with it. Sasuke nibbled on his third or possibly seventh tomato, leaning into Itachi's side. White fluff clung to Itachi's hair and melted chocolate dotted his armor.

"Haku can eat all the fucking candy he wants," Zabuza said absently. "Long as he stays alive and does his job, he can do whatever the fuck he wants."

Kakashi watched Haku smear a streak of chocolate across his face as he wiped his mouth and duck his head to hide an embarrassed smile when Temari laughed at him. "What if he wants to stop?" he said quietly. "What if he doesn't want to be a shinobi anymore?"

"That'll never happen," said Zabuza, with cold certainty and the faintest shadow of regret. "Kid hates killing - hell, he hates fighting - but he can't help but protect. He'll never stand back with someone else in danger. He's a fucking shinobi."

That was the problem. They were all 'fucking shinobi.' Kakashi sighed silently. "Hey," he said, nudging Zabuza with his foot. "Get me a chocolate marshmallow thing."

Zabuza rolled his eyeballs up to glare at Kakashi.

"How long are you going to be gone?" Sasuke asked in a small voice.

"Not long," Itachi answered, following Kakashi up onto the back of the winged ink creature. Like Kakashi, he had switched to Konohan armor and a cloak draped lightly over a small travel pack and his katana. "Listen to Juu while we are gone."

Sasuke didn't roll his eyes, but it was clearly a close thing. "Okay, but - " His shoulders slumped. "Yeah. Okay."

"This construct will rise to the appropriate altitude for sustained flight when you activate it and will continue to fly west until it runs out of chakra," Sai explained. "You will not be able to adjust the direction or the speed." His brow furrowed as he glanced at the ink creature. "I have not been able to formulate such a jutsu yet."

"This is fine," Kakashi said. He glanced down.

Shisui watched impassively, his mask hiding any emotion his face may have betrayed. Sakura and Naruto flanked Sasuke, Temari a supportive presence at their backs. Zabuza was leaning heavily on Haku, but though he looked significantly less concerned about their departure than the kids though his glower was still present. The assembly clustered in somber silence, a far cry from the marshmallow roasting party of just a few hours earlier.

"Oh, kids," said Kakashi, half turning. "Your three days starts now. Don't get caught doing anything you shouldn't and don't kill anyone. Go wild."

There was a brief pause as everyone else digested his words. Then Naruto whooped, leaping up and punching the air, and Temari laughed, a fierce glint in her eyes. Neji and Sai traded quick glances of mutual understanding, and even Sasuke cracked a small smile.

Sakura beamed. "Books!"

"Michishio," said Gaara sagely.

Shisui's head whipped between Kakashi and the exuberant pack in horrified disbelief. "Taichou!" he cried, outraged.

"Fuck you, Hatake," Zabuza snarled.

"Mhmm," said Kakashi, letting his chakra jump to the seal on the ink-creature's back. "See you soon."

The massive bird rocketed off the ground, carrying Kakashi and Itachi up into the endless darkness of the night sky. Kakashi clung to its back with chakra anchoring his feet and one steadying hand as his cloak whipped around him. The air dropped from chill to freezing as they rose, lashing against Kakashi's bare shoulders until he wrapped his cloak around himself more securely. The wind would have carried his words away, so when he glanced over to check on Itachi, he signed, status?

Itachi's Sharingan glowed dimly in the darkness. Stable, he responded.

The Village rushed past them, marked by flickering torches and electric lights - then, the sprawling training grounds as they approached the mountain range that ringed the Inner Village. A jagged break in the mountains yawned before them, the peak it used to be before it met an irate Tsunade crumbling into shadows deeper than those around it. Here, the air was clean and crisp, with no trace of the ashes that still tainted the streets.

The air grew thin and almost unbearably sharp, and the currents that buffeted Kakashi's mask tossed the ink construct back and forth, but its wings carried it inexorably forward. By and by the mountains gave way to hills, and then the Lower City sprawled out below them in a blur of dimmed lights and rooftops. Kakashi peered down wryly - marching the same distance had taken weeks of bitter loss and combat but now flew past in just a few hours.

Muted lights dotted the harbor, a brighter yellow-white glowing from the top of the lighthouse on the bluff, but then they were past and the open ocean stretched out before them. Moonlight streamed down, glittering across the surface of the waves far below, and wisps of cloud streamed ghostlike above them.

Curious, Kakashi opened his Sharingan and looked down. Pinpricks of chakra danced through the water, dim and obscured by the moonlight, distant and indistinct enough that Kakashi wouldn't be able to tell if they were shinobi or fish or whales. He closed the eye again, letting the greedy pull of chakra fade to its usual gentle tug, and pulled back his hand to crouch upright on the construct's back.

The creature boasted angled, elongated wings and a forked tail rather than the raptor's broad, straight wings and fanlike tail that Sai normally painted into existence for reconnaissance or combat. Kakashi expected Sai must have spent long days studying seabirds to create this one, designed for distance travel.

In Konoha, recruiters scouted a particular kind of child for the Anbu trainee program even before entrance to the shinobi Academy - the ideal candidate was intuitive, naturally gifted, of a calm and consistent temperament, and an orphan. Uzuki Yuugao, from Kakashi's old team, had been one of the best products of the program, barely thirteen at the time of her graduation and induction. Sai, had the events of the Fall not taken him out of Konoha, could have followed in her footsteps.

Sai hadn't had formal training beyond the two or three years in the trainee program, but he'd led his team on long-term scouting and infiltration missions. He had no one to teach him his ink jutsu, but his constructs had only grown in size and capability. He experimented and learned and created, all so quietly that the brilliance of his achievements went unremarked. It was a kind of genius that was understated to Kakashi and Itachi's much flashier careers.

However, Sai was also an eleven-year-old producing experimental jutsu that he himself did not know the limits of, so the ink bird vanished beneath their feet in a puff of smoke and dumped them several thousand meters from the ocean surface without warning.

The buffeting air currents ripped away Kakashi's first attempts at a controlled drop, sending him plummeting through the air in an undignified tumble. He caught a glimpse of Itachi, dark cloak and pale armor, before the wind ripped him away again.

Wind-natured chakra was the most elusive nature type for Kakashi, but he reached for it anyways, wrestling it beneath him with his free hand to slow his fall. The ocean rushed up far faster than he expected in the blur of darkness and instead of landing on the surface, Kakashi crashed straight through and plunged into the icy water.

The shock from the cold and the impact knocked the breath out of his lungs, and Kakashi forcibly blocked his throat against the instinctive inhale. He held himself still, let the undercurrents push him about as they pleased until he caught the glimmer of moonlight and propelled himself towards the surface.

Itachi was already crouched on the surface a dozen paces away when Kakashi hauled himself out, both his hair and cloak drenched and droplets glimmering on the porcelain of his mask. Steam rose from his shoulders from the chakra warming him, and Kakashi shook his hair out before following suit. The bandana over his hair dropped into the water with a sad plop, vanishing rapidly beneath the waves.

"Taichou," Itachi greeted, the barest suggestion of a shiver threading his voice. Kakashi tilted his head inquiringly. "While flight is an efficient method of transport, the dismount is rather unpredictable."

Kakashi hummed agreement as his chakra stirred sluggishly beneath his skin, unable to trust his voice to hold steady. The ocean bobbed them both up and down, dripping moonlight and salt-sticky seawater and buffeted by Kiri's winter winds. "Approximate location?" he asked, once his chakra had chased the chill away enough that his clothes felt only uncomfortably wet and not about to freeze solid.

"24-36, exact sector unknown," Itachi answered. The crimson in his eyes glowed and blinked out. "We are approximately a hundred and eighty klicks east of the southern tip of Uzu no Kuni. "I can send my summons to find the nearest island if we are to stop for the night."

"Do it," Kakashi agreed immediately. He frowned down at his mostly-unbroken arm and tipped water out of the sling. He would have to cut the cast off, now that it had gotten completely and irreparably soaked, but he was loathe to do so atop these unpredictable waters. At Kakashi's back, the golden suggestion of dawn probed at the deep blue-black of the night sky.

With a burst of chakra and the rush of something not-of-this-world, a swirl of black wings and feathers spilled into the air between them, and one of the crows alighted on Itachi's shoulders as the rest of its flock wheeled into the fading night. "You remember Kombu?" Itachi said politely, and the crow bobbed its head in greeting.

"Aa," responded Kakashi, rising to his feet. "Your help is appreciated, Kombu."

Kombu croaked deep in his throat, pleased, and fluffed his chest feathers. Then he turned to tease the tangles from Itachi's hair with his beak, which Itachi bore with patient stoicism.

The rest of the crows winged back one by one, taking up residence on Itachi's free shoulder, upraised forearm, and then Kakashi's shoulders, chirping and rattling their discoveries. Itachi listened to their reports quietly and said, "There is a small island, ten klicks at twelve degrees north of due west, uninhabited. It should serve our purposes."

Kakashi nodded, conscious of the birds huddling on either side of his face. "Lead the way," he said.

The flock of crows did not disperse, but glided alongside them as the glow of dawn crept slowly over the horizon. Half an hour's run brought them to the sandy edges of an island that was not more than trees growing on a rock jutting out of the waves, but Kakashi and Itachi didn't need much more than dry land to sleep on before continuing on their way. Metal glinted in the water at the edges of the pristine beach, and Kakashi crouched to fish a kunai out of the water. The wrapping on the handle had unravelled, and the beginnings of rust marred the blade.

"I read the report: a skirmish was fought here," Itachi explained quietly. "But this location was of little strategic importance, and both sides withdrew without casualties."

Kakashi hummed, nodding to Itachi to proceed to the main bulk of the island. "Let's set up camp," he said.

Itachi, the dark shadows of his crows leapfrogging through the trees around him, slipped into the grey twilight. By the time he returned, Kakashi was sitting beside a small campfire, frowning in concentration as he cut through the sodden plaster on his arm painstakingly. "I have set the perimeter seals. There are no creatures here to hunt," Itachi reported, and Kombu croaked his disgruntled agreement from his shoulder. "We will have to eat the ration bars."

Kakashi hummed, peeling off the last of the plaster. He dug through his pack and tossed a couple of wrapped bars to Itachi before tearing open his own. The gentle slap of water against the shore was the only sound between them as they ate.

The moon waned, and the wind nipped at Kakashi's exposed skin. Itachi shifted to reach for his water, and the sound snapped up Kakashi's attention. Uneasiness crept up on him again, the camaraderie of the flight and subsequent fall worn away, and wariness twisted at his chakra. "Is this far enough from Kirigakure?" Kakashi asked lightly.

Itachi stilled abruptly, and very deliberately slid his sheathed katana off his back and out of easy reach. "Perimeter check," he said to Kombu curtly, and the crow took off with an unhappy rattle.

They sat in silence for a moment, Itachi watching the fire and Kakashi watching Itachi. Then Kombu cawed somewhere in the distance, and Itachi's shoulders slumped just a little before straightening. "Do you remember what I told you, about what happened to me in the days before the Fall?" Itachi asked, without looking up. Perhaps it was to make Kakashi feel safe, so he knew he would not look into an active Sharingan without warning.

"Danzou gave you the orders to exterminate the Uchiha Clan," Kakashi answered slowly. "You approached someone you believed to be Uchiha Madara to help with the mission."

Itachi nodded, the movement graceful and without any hint of his unease. "I believed both double-crossed me during the Fall, during that mission."

Kakashi narrowed his eyes. "'Believed,'" he parroted.

"Uchiha Madara held a deep hatred against both the Clan and Konoha," Itachi explained. "I assumed, when I sensed the attacks on the rest of the Village, that he had decided that the rest of Konoha made too tempting a target than merely the Uchiha. I was meant to leave with him after the completion of the mission, but given the deviation from the agreed, I did not seek him out again."

Kakashi nodded, but a sinking dread had begun to claw its way down his spine. "But?"

"I came across him once more in Kirigakure," Itachi confessed, his eyes blank and his voice listless. "He was waiting for me in the catacombs. He told me that he had nothing to do with the Fall, save what I had asked him to do, and that he still had plans for me."

His words dropped heavily into the silence.

Kakashi waited for his throat to untwist before he said, "What was he doing in Kiri?"

Itachi's eyes darted to him and away again. "I am not sure. Given that he lay in wait for me in the third level catacombs, I assume he had access to Kirigakure's leadership, up to and including the Mizukage."

When Itachi had said he had to tell Kakashi something and it couldn't be in Kirigakure, Kakashi had assumed it was something along the lines of a mole in Hana-ha ranks - which, while bad, was nothing earth-shattering - and at worst it was Itachi's bid to assassinate him quietly somewhere no one could see. The possibility of Konoha's vengeful co-founder drafting his sixteen-year-old captain for some international plot had never even crossed his mind.

"What did he want?"

"He told me he knew I tired of the endless cycle of war, and that if I joined him, he would be able to put an end to it," Itachi said. "Have you heard of Akatsuki?"

Kakashi paused at the abrupt pivot, but Itachi did and said nothing without purpose. "The mercenary group, out of Ame?" he asked, curious despite the slow churn of horror; of what, he did not yet know.

"Akatsuki belongs to him. It is his sword, but he did not share with me its exact purpose. What he is planning will threaten all of the Elemental Nations, and the only way we will be able to counter it is by having a man on the inside. This is a rare opportunity for an infiltration mission." Itachi's back stayed ramrod straight, his hands without a hint of tremor, but his eyes -

Kakashi had never seen him look so young.

"He wants you to join Akatsuki," Kakashi surmised. His chakra itched under his skin, but he tamped it down - the danger wasn't here, there was nothing to fight though his hackles prickled insistently. "And if you decline?"

Itachi remained silent, the firelight dancing against the darkness of his eyes. "I cannot deny him," he said at last. "He knows I have a weakness, and he will not hesitate to use it against me if I do not comply. We cannot stop him if we do not know what he is plotting - it is better that I go, and pass information back anonymously."

That weakness's name was Uchiha Sasuke. Itachi might have given his loyalty to Hanabi-ha, but he would turn on Kakashi or even Shisui a thousand times over if it meant Sasuke would be safe, and they both knew it. Kakashi wouldn't be able to stop him, not without one of their deaths; he suspected this was another thing they both knew. Yet Itachi had not made the decision himself and vanished into the night - he was offering his trust to Kakashi with his own life in the balance.

"What will he ask of you?" Kakashi asked.

"To kill. To raze villages, and later Villages, most likely," Itachi said after a moment's consideration. "You know the kind of work Akatsuki takes. Even for shinobi, they are honorless."

"You don't have to go," Kakashi said, but he didn't know who he was trying to convince. "You have all of Hanabi-ha behind you - and you and Shisui and I can keep Sasuke safe."

"If he comes, I cannot stop him," said Itachi, closing his eyes briefly as though exhausted. "And he will, if I refuse to follow him. He may only be one man, but Hanabi-ha is still too delicate to survive his displeasure." He paused. "He will likely ask for proof of my loyalty."

An icy chill prickled down Kakashi's spine. "Not my head, I hope," he said lightly.

"That would be a price too steep to ask of one still indecisive," said Itachi, far too seriously. "He will set a task that alienates me from my previous loyalties without framing himself as the enemy."

Perhaps not Kakashi's, not yet, but Hana-ha blood. And again and again the longer Itachi remained within his reach, until Itachi truly had nowhere to return to.

"You've thought about this," Kakashi noted. "You think you can sell that? Your loyalty?"

"He appealed to my desire for peace, and I shared some of my reluctance for the involvement of Hanabi-ha in the Kiri Civil War," Itachi said. "And he would not have approached me if he believed I would compromise his mission." His eyes drifted over the trees. "He likely knows of my crow summons, but he cannot keep track of them all - they are apt messengers. Otherwise, there are alternative methods in which I can avoid suspicion while passing on information - "

"Itachi," Kakashi interrupted. "Your life will constantly be in danger. Infiltrating Akatsuki - you can't come back." That was a massive understatement, but what Itachi was proposing, not even proposing but planning to do -

The only way out of an organization like Akatsuki was death.

Itachi fell silent. "No," he said after a moment. "I expect not."

"This is a suicide mission," said Kakashi. "Itachi, if you do this - " when you do this " - the only way you will ever see any of us again, it'll be on the opposite side of the battlefield. Even Sasuke."

Itachi glanced up at Kakashi, his eyes open and vulnerable. "I entrust his safety to you," he said softly.

The Hatake were an ancient clan, but they'd given up the old traditions when they dwindled, when his father's father and aunts and uncles had left for the battlefield and never returned. Kakashi still knew the words, however, and they dragged themselves out of his mouth unwillingly. "On my honor, your trust is not misplaced."

Itachi smiled, a small, genuine thing. "Thank you," he said.

Kakashi nodded, a sharp jerk of his head. His skin itched, and he bit back a growl, muzzled the chakra snapping in his chest. His instinct was to protect his pack but here, he was helpless against the puppet strings slowly strangling Itachi and tearing him away, and Kakashi hated it. He took one breath to steady himself, then a second before he opened his mouth, but Itachi spoke first.

"In order for this to work, no one can know of my intentions," he said, and again he met Kakashi's eyes. "You cannot tell Tsunade-sama or Shikaku-taishou. Every person involved increases the possibility of an information leak."

Kakashi hesitated. "Itachi - "

"Give me your word, Taichou," Itachi said quietly. "This goes no further than us."

"No," said Kakashi.

Itachi frowned. "Taichou - "

"You overestimate me, Itachi," Kakashi said. "If I die, no one will hold your secret. When the moment's right, tell Shisui," he added. "He's already Captain of Covert Intelligence; he'll be in a position to handle any reports you send."

Itachi's eyes drifted back to the flickering flames. "Shisui," he agreed, his voice soft.

Kakashi tipped his head back, watching the smoke from their fire twine around the yellow-bright sparks. The top of the sun had finally cleared the horizon, streaking the skies with crimson and gold. "We need to rest," he said. "There's a long way to the mainland." Itachi hesitated, reluctant to let the conversation drop when he had carried its shadow for so long, and Kakashi said, "We have fourteen days and thirteen nights outside Kiri. We have time to talk more later."

What Itachi told him weighed heavily on his mind nevertheless. Kakashi doused the fire and settled down in a hollow created by the roots of neighboring trees, wrapping his cloak around him for warmth. He watched with a slitted eye as Itachi settled in the crook of the tree in front of him, and by all appearances, dropped off to sleep almost immediately. His crows still hopped from branch to branch, chirruping amongst themselves. Kakashi closed his eyes.

The chance for a proper farewell was rare for shinobi, but Kakashi wondered if it didn't just make the loss more bitter - a slow, festering wound instead of an abrupt, sharp agony.

Two weeks. That was how long he had Itachi for. Beyond that was uncertain, but inevitably, he would be gone and Kakashi would have to deal with that.

Kakashi opened his eye in time to see the young crow hop a little closer to his ankle. The sun beamed down, high enough in the sky that it must have been early afternoon, and Kakashi soaked in even the meagre warmth of a winter sun as his mind adjusted to the sudden transition from asleep to awake.

The crow tilted its head and offered Kakashi a, "K-k-k-krrrp," as a greeting.

Kakashi couldn't differentiate between crows very well, but this one had a particularly unruly patch of feathers at the back of its neck and a whiff of sunflower seeds. "Hijiki," he said.

The crow chirped, pleased, and took the correct identification as an invitation to flutter onto Kakashi's leg, then his proffered arm. Kakashi ran a finger down its head and glanced up to the tree where Itachi had been sleeping. It was empty. The crow on his arm flapped frantically, beating his wings in Kakashi's face, and he looked down at the bird bemusedly as he leaned away.

The crow chirped again, harsher, closer to a caw, and launched itself from Kakashi's arm only to wheel around when it reached the end of the clearing. Kakashi took the hint and followed it through the trees. The sun glinted as it caught the tips of the waves, and about seventy meters out from the beach, Itachi crouched on top of the water stripped down to just his pants despite the bite of the wind. The dark shapes of his crows swooped overhead, venturing out in wide sweeps before circling back. As Kakashi watched, Itachi dove, slipping smoothly underwater with barely a splash.

"Should I be concerned?" Kakashi asked his crow guide, only half joking. Uchiha were all about fire, after all, and fire and water didn't mix. The bird ignored him, abandoning him on the shore as it winged up to join the rest of its flock.

But it was Itachi after all, so Kakashi stepped onto the water leisurely and wandered out to the spot where Itachi had gone under. He squinted out into the open ocean, in the improbable chance that someone was coming their way.

Itachi surfaced with about as much warning as he'd submerged, pulling himself back on top of the waves with an ease the belied the chakra control he needed. "Maa, Itachi," Kakashi said without taking his eyes off the horizon. "You're going to give yourself pneumonia."

Itachi expressed his doubt by politely ignoring him. "I have acquired food for a meal before we depart," he said, and lifted the sodden bundle of cloth wrapped around his fist, bulging faintly at the edges.

Kakashi peered into the makeshift bag to see a collection of clams and cockles speckled with algae. Given that their midday meal would have been nothing, if Itachi hadn't gone diving, he elected not to comment on Itachi's misappropriation of his cloak as a seafood bag. "I'll take these," he said. "Go put on some other clothes; those will take forever to dry out."

Itachi nodded wordless agreement, handing over his haul without protest. Kakashi eyed him discreetly. This kid was supposed to be the most brilliant shinobi of his generation, yet here he was, diving for cockles in the middle of winter in ice-cold water that not even copious warming chakra could fully blunt, wearing nothing but threadbare Anbu pants. Maybe he'd gotten everything except the self-preservation instinct.

They left the island behind once they had finished eating, chasing the sun to the west, and by the time they reached Uzu no Kuni, it had traded places with the moon once more.

Kakashi, when they had bedded down for the night in the overgrown grasses between an abandoned farm and untamed hills, said in a low voice, "When you leave, it'll have to be believable - both to him and Akatsuki and Mei and Kiri."

"Aa," Itachi agreed. "I have a plan."

Kakashi dropped his head backed to stare straight up into the night sky. Thin, pale clouds rolled overhead, swept by the wind, and they momentarily obscured the glow of the moon and the faint pinpricks of stars. He scrubbed a hand over the cloth covering his mouth and took a silent breath. "I have a feeling I won't like this plan," he said lightly.

"Given that Tsunade-sama will be present, she will likely be able to mitigate the damage so it is not very extensive," Itachi offered, which was less than comforting.

"Ah," said Kakashi bleakly.

Itachi turned, his dark eyes unusually earnest. "Taichou, you trust your instincts. I trust you, and you trust me as well. That will be enough; the plan will work."

A shockingly idealistic departure from Itachi's usual cold pragmatism. But here, there was no pragmatic option. Kakashi closed his eyes and let the silence that followed lie unbroken between them as the night deepened.

Yu no Kuni, juxtaposed with its frigid neighbor Shimo no Kuni, boasted mild weather and full, green trees. No one knew for sure why the country stayed warm when the lands around it sank into winter, except that the same phenomenon also produced the hot springs for which it had been named.

Kakashi had never had much cause to visit Yu unless he was on a mission, on his way to a mission, or being chased while bleeding copiously after a mission. Despite the lack of positive memories, relief prickled at the back of Kakashi's mind when its shores came into sight. They had left Uzu no Kuni early the previous morning, so the sun now still hung high in the sky, not even halfway through its descent.

Kakashi tipped his head up to scent the air, but they were upwind and he caught only the briny tang of the sea. He slowed to a stop, and Itachi mirrored him as he crouched, rising and dropping with the bulge and ebb of the waves beneath their feet. "Anything?" Kakashi asked.

Itachi's cloak fluttered behind him as he stared out towards the coastline, catching briefly on the sheath of his katana before he shifted to let it flow free. "Clear," he answered.

Kakashi's near-instinctive use of bunshin and kawarimi made him ideal to take the brunt of any surprise ambush because he would not be there to take it, so he said, "Follow me and watch our six."

Itachi nodded seriously, where Zabuza would have grumbled that he knew what he was doing, don't treat him like a green genin, sir. He'd miss that about Itachi, when he -

Kakashi grimaced.

The stretch of beach where they made landfall was uninhabited, and if they had estimated their position accurately, would remain that way for several kilometers on either side. They weren't there to stay in the uninhabited regions, however, so once in the trees, Kakashi pointed them towards the nearest town.

He took off his battered porcelain mask and hooked it on the back of his belt, tugging a thin scarf out of his pouch and over his black half-mask in a halfhearted disguise, one that did about as much to hide it as his cloak did his Anbu armor. Itachi watched him with a slightly pained expression, tying his old hitai-ate over his forehead. Kakashi didn't have his; he'd been wearing his Anbu uniform during the Fall. He'd have to steal one from one of the teams that'd inevitably be sent after them, if they weren't all Anbu.

Itachi blinked. He tilted his head inquiringly down the road.

Kakashi gave Itachi a droll thumbs up.

The weather was jarringly mild. Kakashi set a pace between ambling and purposeful, enjoying the warm breeze that brushed his face and lifted the edges of his cloak. With a respectable distance between themselves and the ocean, the air was a cocktail of fresh leaves, hints of bird and squirrel, and distantly, the slightly sour-acrid scent that indicated a town.

Itachi's eyes flickered back and forth between the trees on either side; he relied on his sight more than Kakashi did. His shoulders were relaxed and his hands nowhere near his weapons, but he like Kakashi was tightly coiled as if they were back on the battlefields of Kiri instead of walking down the road to a mostly civilian village under a blue sky as the birds sang in the trees.

The immediate fear of the first person they encountered three klicks from the town, a stooped older man in a well-worn but well-kept yukata and wide-brimmed straw hat, was a much more familiar, almost comforting sight. He clutched the straps of his pack with white-knuckled hands, skirting to the far side of the path as Kakashi and Itachi passed. Fifteen minutes later, it was an entire family piled in a mule-drawn cart, the children watching with wide eyes as their mother drew them close and their father twitched the reins to hurry the mule along.

Kakashi exchanged a glance with Itachi. News from the mainland had been sparse, but Konoha must have been busy for their appearances to incite such a reaction.

Gradually, the forest thinned and gave way to a couple of small farms lining the road on the outskirts of the town. Bunches of green lined neatly plowed fields, and on the far side next to the treeline, small figures moved busily back and forth with pails and long-handled shovels or hoes. A massive draft horse blinked liquid eyes at Kakashi from its enclosure, its tail flicking back and forth languidly.

The town melted into existence in front of them, first a scattered house or two, then more and more. Home-grown food carts followed, then food stalls and stands and actual restaurants. The sight was almost bizarre in its sheer lack of destruction. The first onsen appeared somewhere between the middle of the food carts and the beginning of the food stalls, and from there on they popped up like weeds, sandwiched between restaurants and bars and grocery stores alike.

Normally, Kakashi would be all for a nice warm soak after a long, cold journey, but after nearly a year in Kirigakure, he'd rather not spend more time than he needed to in water.

As they walked, the sparse crowds around them muted, heads turning as the townspeople paused in their business to watch the pair go by. Kakashi kept his face blank and his stare ahead, but the atmosphere of uneasiness and fear only thickened as they continued towards the center of the town. The attention wasn't dangerous - Kakashi and Itachi were here to be noticed, to some extent - but warned that the peace here could not be entirely true.

Itachi made a low voice in his throat, and when Kakashi glanced over, he nodded at an inn further down the street.

Kakashi eyed the buildings around it - restaurant, restaurant, housing unit, multiple escape routes and doors in the alleys on either side - and nodded agreement.

The sun had just brushed the tops of the trees as Kakashi nudged his way through the inn's front door. The young woman at the front desk looked up with a cheerful smile and greeted, "Welcome to…" before she registered what they were wearing and trailed off, her eyes wide. She clutched the edge of the desk, frozen as Kakashi and Itachi approached.

"One room," said Kakashi, pitching his voice low. "Two beds."

The woman swallowed, her eyes darting between them, but she didn't release her death grip on her desk.

Kakashi glanced at Itachi, who was standing at his side in his unconsciously predatory manner. Itachi frowned back slightly, a question in his eyes, and Kakashi tipped his chin a little to the side. Obligingly, Itachi stepped backwards, turning away and tucking his hands behind his back as he examined the rest of the room.

Kakashi turned back to the receptionist. "One room, please," he repeated. "Corner room, if you have it."

The woman dragged her eyes away from him long enough to glance down at the record book in front of her before flickering back up nervously. She reached under the table and brought out a key, offering it to Kakashi but setting it on the desk when her hand shook. "Room...Room Seven, third floor," she managed.

Projecting his movements, Kakshi took the key slowly, but she flinched anyways. "How much?" he asked.

The woman shook her head. "No...no charge," she whispered.

"How much?" Kakashi repeated, a little gentler, but the woman didn't answer, her lips pressed into a bloodless line. Kakashi reached into his cloak, ignoring the way the woman jerked backwards nearly into the wall. "Eight hundred ryou," he said, setting a stack of bills on the table in front of her.

Itachi slipped to his side as he turned and left the young woman behind in favor of the stairs. "You are right to be wary," Itachi told the receptionist. "The next shinobi to come, even those wearing this symbol, will be far more callous."

"You scared her," Kakashi noted mildly, in the cover of the stairwell.

"As did you," Itachi pointed out. "However, I thought it needlessly cruel for her to expect such restraint from the next shinobi patrons. Her fear may keep her alive."

"Floor three, Room Seven," said Kakashi in lieu of replying.

Four doors lined either side of the hallway, and a window set in the wall at the far end let the setting sun spill across the floor. A wooden plaque bearing the number '7' adorned the door directly to its right. Kakashi waited for Itachi to step a pace to the side and two back before unlocking the door and pushing it open in one smooth movement. He glanced in warily, taking in the corner of a bed, a low table pressed against the wall, and another door hung slightly ajar, presumably the bathroom. "Clear. One door, closed." Kakashi said.

"Clear," Itachi echoed. "Closed window, closed wardrobe." He advanced, one arm lifted at his side in readiness for a fast katana draw.

The war had ruined them, if they were clearing a rented room in a sleepy Yu inn like they would a trapped and warded outpost in Kiri.

Kakashi slipped in after Itachi, keeping an eye on the bathroom door as Itachi investigated the wardrobe and the beds. He turned and gave Kakashi a nod, and Kakashi swung open the bathroom door cautiously.

Toilet, sink, showerhead, drain in the middle of a sloped floor. The most threatening things there were the aggressively curved faucet handles. Kakashi gave them a second narrow-eyed stare before telling Itachi, "All clear. Window bed is mine," he added.

Itachi blinked his reproach but swept his cloak off and onto the other bed without protest.

"Pick something for dinner," Kakashi offered magnanimously, shrugging out of the harness for his katana and taking a seat on the bed. It creaked under his weight, but Kakashi ran an exploratory hand over its surface without encountering any major dips or bumps. He inhaled impulsively and instantly regretted it when the cloying mustiness of dust shot up his nose. His eyes watered, and he blinked rapidly and willed away the urge to sneeze.

"Onigiri," decided Itachi.

Kakashi raised an amused eyebrow. "We're finally in a town and you still want travel food?"

Itachi's eyes pinched at the edges as he considered. "And yakitori with soba."

That, Kakashi enthusiastically approved of. "Yakitori with soba it is."

Itachi split off as soon as they stepped out of the inn doors in search of a restaurant. Kakashi wandered back towards the edges of the town in search of an onigiri stall. He'd abandoned his armor, holsters, and katana in the room, slapped a pre-prepared alarm seal on the inside of the door, and now wore a light henge with a loose, long-sleeved shirt just a few shades darker than his hair over his uniform pants. He didn't quite look like a typical civilian, but even with the bandana patching Obito's eye and the scarf covering his mouth and nose, he didn't quite look like a shinobi either.

He slipped through the dinner crowd, absentmindedly cataloguing things of importance - a rough-looking drunkard with a small knife tucked into his waistband eyeing the crowds around him with hazy belligerence; an abandoned building with signs it had been recently disturbed; a dessert stand with Itachi's favorite kind of dango. His slow circling gave him three options of onigiri sellers, and in the end, he chose one operated by an old couple wearing matching blue outfits.

"Good morning!" the man beamed, and his wife swatted him over the head with a wooden spoon.

"Not the new customers, Shunsuke," she grumbled, tossing the spoon to the tub of used dishware. "Can't let 'em know exactly how senile you've gone."

The man just grinned, gape-toothed and entirely pleased with himself. "Evenin'," he said to Kakashi. "What can I get ya?"

Kakashi cast a brief glance over the handpainted sign propped up against the front of the cart. "Four each of the salmon, pickled cabbage, and chicken," he said. He may as well buy breakfast as well, but if they ended up eating it all tonight, they needed the extra calories anyways.

"Big eater!" the man exclaimed. "Wonderful. Tha'll be four hundred an' twenty ryou an' twenty minutes."

"Ten to fifteen minutes," the woman corrected over her shoulder as Kakashi fished the bills out of his inside pocket.

"Ten t' fifteen minutes," her husband agreed, sweeping Kakashi's money off the counter and into his apron pocket in a blink.

"I'll come back then," Kakashi offered, and the man hummed absentmindedly, already absorbed in the fresh fish fillet he pulled out of an icebox in the back.

With his temporary anonymity, Kakashi meandered through the dinner crowd, squeezing past a boisterous goggle of teenagers and a ponderous pair of old women with their clasped hands swinging between them leisurely. There had to have been one onsen for every five of everything else, but inexplicably, each had a steady trickle of patrons either entering or leaving.

He turned a corner into a small plaza, the centerpiece of which was a small but elaborate fountain bubbling steaming water from its center. Benches ringed the square, a clear border between the fountain and the outdoor tables of the restaurants at its edges. Carvings in the cobblestones named the town Yu-Zaou, and Kakashi almost sighed at the confirmation.

He took a seat on the nearest open bench, sitting against the armrest to give himself the best field of view with his open eye. A couple of barefoot children, a girl and a boy, splashed in the outermost pool of the fountain, chasing each other back and forth and hurling water at each other with their cupped hands. A pair of women watched them with one eye as they talked and laughed with each other, the books open on their laps forgotten.

It had been nearly a year since Kakashi had seen a town in peacetime, and it settled and unnerved him both. Only half the sun still peeked above the rooftops in the distance, so he heaved himself to his feet with exaggerated reluctance and doubled back to the onigiri cart.

"The big eater!" the old man said cheerfully when he turned around to find Kakashi on the other side of the counter. He set a pouch made of stitched lotus leaves down in front of them, but didn't move his hand when Kakashi reached for it. "Thirty ryou f'r the bag," he said brightly.

"Highway robbery," Kakashi complained dryly, but forked over the money anyways as the man giggled.

"Makin' a living," the woman corrected, flashing him a quicksilver smirk.

Kakashi took the onigiri and shook his head, amused, and went to find Itachi.

Itachi, at the head of a queue for a restaurant wafting tantalizing scents from its open double doors, glanced at Kakashi, glanced at the lotus leaf pouch, and said, "You paid extra for the bag."

"Maa," Kakashi protested, pasting an offended and slightly injured expression on his face. Itachi stared back at him, expectant and somewhat disapproving. "You can't expect me to carry them all in my bare hands."

Itachi projected silent disappointment until the host stuck his head out of the restaurant and called, "Next!"

Rather than a sleek, modern establishment, which most teenagers in the town seemed to prefer from what Kakashi had seen of the town, Itachi had chosen an older restaurant with tables well-worn and smooth with age. The lights flickering in the walls were firelight, and the air inside was slightly smoky despite the open windows ringing the room up near the ceiling. Older married couples sans children bracketed the low cushions the host led them to on both sides and cups of hot sake or rice tea dotted tables all around the room.

Itachi was a sentimental old geezer in a sixteen-year-old body, but that wasn't news.

"We're close enough to the ocean that if you want seafood udon, it'll be fresh enough," Kakashi drawled,

Itachi peeked over the top of his menu at Kakashi. "We are finally on the mainland and you still want seafood?"

"Your cousin is a bad influence on you," Kakashi said severely, narrowing his eyes at Itachi's blank face. "You used to be my obedient little kouhai but here you are, throwing my own words back at me."

Itachi ignored him. "Niku udon and two skewers of yakitori," he told the waiter who set earthen cups of sake down before them.

"Beef for me as well," Kakashi said. "And a side of eggplant tempura."

Cows were scarce in Mizu no Kuni due to the sheer lack of open land for pastures. The cattle and pig farms that did exist in the foothills of Kiri's main island mountain range had been seized by loyalist forces at the beginning of the war, from what Kakashi understood, and by the time the combined Hanran and Hana-ha forces hit its shores, a living hoofed mammal that wasn't a military horse was about as rare as a Kiri shinobi who couldn't swim.

Their udon, topped with chunks of broiled beef in a savory sauce, reminded Kakashi just how much he'd missed land-based meat. Still, he leaned over it and inhaled, picking apart ingredients by scent to check for poisons. Itachi watched, nursing his sake, until Kakashi gave him a nod.

"What is the budget allotted for his trip?" Itachi asked, selecting a piece of beef delicately with his chopsticks.

"Did you choose a high-end restaurant?" Kakashi asked dryly. "Enough to spend a little excess for one meal. Plus more, if we can get it." Steal it.

Itachi's brows pulled together a little at that – the first part, not the second; Itachi was nothing if not pragmatic. "When will you meet your contact?" he asked instead.

Kakashi hummed. "If I find him tonight, tonight. If I don't see any sign of him in three days, we'll have to move on anyways – but he'll be here. Yu-Zaou, when the dust settles on the Kiri Civil War. He knows my time here will be short, and he won't want to give up what I have."

Itachi didn't comment on the vague wording; he would be on a different side soon, and it was in their best interests that he not learn new, sensitive information. "Would you prefer I restrict my movements to the room in the inn or patrol the town for impending teams?"

"Patrol," answered Kakashi. "Any sign of trouble, send up something big and flashy and get out of the way. Rendezvous in the northern woods outside Aoshima when either the sun or the moon is directly overhead. Otherwise, I should be back here within three hours."

Itachi nodded, and pulled a piece of chicken off its skewer with his teeth with a mysterious elegance.

Twilight had fallen by the time they exited the restaurant, and with the sun down the air was cooler but only just. Kakashi enjoyed the warm breeze ruffling his hair, the comfort of the low light perfect for hunting. This was the time between dog and wolf, and Kakashi was neither and both.

Once in their room, he pulled his Anbu armor back on, settling his porcelain mask over his face and his cloak over his shoulders. Instead of finishing the ensemble with his katana, however, he held it in its sheath and harness out to Itachi. "Hold onto this for me," he said.

Itachi paused in tugging his bracers on to take it. He looked down at it, then back up at Kakashi. "Hai," he said.

Kakashi slipped a storage scroll out from his pack, and with a splash of blood and a drop of chakra, his tanto appeared atop the seal.

Kakashi didn't have many constants in his life. Any material possessions he owned ended up used up, broken, or left behind at a moment's notice; the katana was his third since joining Anbu, the mask his fifth and technically stolen. His white chakra blade, however, was a clan heirloom, passed down to his father from his father's father and his father before – it was a sword that had seen action in the Warring Clans Era. The carved bone sheath had yellowed over the years and until he was a few years into Anbu he'd used a newer wooden sheath in the field instead, and he knew the blade had been reforged at least twice, but Kakashi wielded it, took care of it, and treasured it like nothing else he owned.

Itachi's eyes locked on the blade and he nodded understanding, but Kakashi knew he didn't, not really. He hooked the sheathed blade into his belt and waited for Itachi to finish armoring.

The two katana sheaths crossed at Itachi's back, the hilts protruding even when he tugged his cloak over his shoulders. "I will go first," Itachi said, standing.

"Don't scare the civilians too badly," said Kakashi wryly. He opened the window and waved Itachi out with a polite, "After you."

Itachi had been pretty damned eager to come on this little trip, considering that it was two weeks away from Sasuke when he had precious little time left, but that was necessity more than desire. Kakashi, too, had been eager to return to the mainland both for necessity and for his own desire to set foot on home ground once more, save one caveat – meeting this contact.

Kakashi was a shinobi and a commanding officer, so he bit down on his reluctance and the metaphorical bullet and dropped out the window once he could no longer see Itachi's retreating back.

Townspeople still bustled about the street though the night had taken hold, with chatter and laughter and the yellow glow of lights drifting out of the bars and onsen in particular. This was the heart of any town's nightlife, and most of Kakashi's experience of these were mission-related given that while he had legally been an adult at age five when he made genin, no one had particularly wanted to serve alcohol to a kid shorter than the barstools.

He kept to the shadows, stealing from building to building until he reached the first bar. A couple of rowdy tables threw dice or cards down between them, and a few others shot the shit at the counter, but when Kakashi inhaled the bitter-bite air wafting out, he recognized nobody. He moved on.

He worked his way through the bars methodically, spiraling out from the first bar as his epicenter. A trendy bar full of giggling girls his age and gigglier boys his age he ruled out almost on first sight, but glanced into anyways. A seedy dive with tables so sticky Kakashi could practically taste it warranted a second look, but only briefly.

He inevitably, unfortunately, hit gold on the seventh bar, a respectably-sized place sandwiched by two onsen. Kakashi spotted the familiar broad shoulders at the bar near the pool tables, far across the wide seating space. He ducked back out to do a perfunctory perimeter sweep, just fast enough that he could deny that he was stalling, before slipping inside. He stepped silently enough that anyone not facing him didn't turn, but those that did see him stiffened at the porcelain cat-mask, the pale flashes of armor under his cloak. He ignored them all, ignored the bartender's wary stare, and went straight for his target.

Jiyaiya glanced carelessly at Kakashi over his shoulder and waved down the bartender. "You know what, Hiseki? Think I'll take that booth after all. Couple bottles of sake for me and my…friend."

Jiraiya's chakra, even tightly reined in to civilian levels, echoed with the vastness of its slumbering, mountainous power. Kakashi followed him to a booth with cracked vinyl seats, where Jiraiya slid a bottle of sake across to him and slapped a paper seal down on the table, activating it with a spark of chakra before he sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. For a moment, he just looked at Kakashi, and then he said, utterly neutral, "I hear congratulations are in order."

Kakashi dipped his head to remove his mask, setting it down on the table in front of him. "The situation in Kiri is stable," he acknowledged.

"Yeah. I heard," Jiraiya rumbled, cracking open his bottle and tipping it into his glass. He didn't say where he'd heard it from. "How is she?"

Kakashi poured himself a shot. "She punched a mountain in half a couple of weeks ago," he answered, stalling. "She's enjoying getting into arguments with Terumi Mei."

"Don't play with me, Kakashi," Jiraiya warned, narrowing his eyes, and the thick-slick feel of his chakra stirred just a little.

Kakashi's hackles rose instinctively, but this was Jiraiya. If he wanted to, Jiraiya could squash him like a bug at twenty-four the same as when he was fourteen, but really the only thing to fear here was Kakashi's own guilt. "She has good days and bad days, same as before."

"She didn't have a brain disease, before." Jiraiya's displeasure was slow-moving but forceful. Kakashi stared at his bottle and chose not to bring up the hemophilia. The older man knocked back another shot. The next time he spoke, his voice was disinterested. "So, the mask. It work?"

Kakashi flicked a glance up over his cup. "It was your creation. It worked. Not even Ao's Byakugan could see through it." Or two pairs of full-blooded Hyuuga Byakugan.

"Well," said Jiraiya, setting his cup down and steepling his hands. "If you're satisfied, there's something that belongs to me now."

Maa, fair's fair, Kakashi tried to say lightly, but the words stuck in his throat.

He reached behind him and drew his tanto in its sheath, turning it over in his hands before setting it on the table between them silently. Kakashi had rewrapped the hilt before he left San's forest, and after a year of use it was smooth and supple. The great wolf pack engraved in the bone sheath twined around the blade, fierce and graceful and familiar - and now, accusing.

Jiraiya watched him impassively. "You can always pick the other option," he said. "The price is a name, yours or theirs."

He wanted the name of the one he had created the mask for. In a choice between his name and Shisui's, there was no contest. Kakashi pushed the heirloom blade across the table. "Take it," he said.

Jiraiya ran his fingers over the carved grooves, tugging the hilt just far enough out of its sheath for the light to catch the blade as Kakashi watched, heartsick. He looked up to meet Kakashi's eye. "I'll take care of it," he assured him. "It's for the better, Kakashi. If your father, Konoha's White Fang, muddied your Clan's reputation by being called Warbringer, how do you think people will react when they find another Hatake fanning the flames of war - one who's already been named Reiketsu and Friend-Killer?" He slipped the tanto into his inner pocket and reached for his bottle of sake again. "Better to let go of the name, preserve what honor the Hatake still have."

"Honor?" Kakashi said, a bare tinge of bitterness slipping into the word. "A traitor and a murderer wears the Hokage's hat in Konoha. Letting him keep it isn't honorable. Restoring Konoha to the rightful successor is my duty - my direct orders from Sandaime-sama."

"It didn't have to be with a war!" Jiraiya growled, slamming the bottle back down onto the table. "You were a child of war too, Kakashi, you should know better than to bring that down on another generation."

I didn't want to start a war was far too petulant, a fool and a coward's excuse. Kakashi took the hit, felt it stab deep and twist, and absorbed the rest of the impact with a shot of sake. He wasn't here to argue, and he didn't have much fight in him tonight anyways. "I agreed to the deal already," he said instead, once the bitter-burn of the alcohol had abated. "I'll give up my Clan name, as promised."

Jiraiya nodded, somber and satisfied. His bottle had only a little left; he upended it into his cup.

"I need another favor," Kakashi said.

Jiraiya raised a patronizing eyebrow. "We're not on the same side anymore, Kakashi," he said. "You're going to have to offer me something in return; that's a business transaction."

"I need a seal design that can contain a partially-transformed jinchuuriki in Tailed-Beast mode," said Kakashi, and Jiraiya sat up, his eyes narrowing.

"For who?" he asked, leaning forward.

The Lost Four was Kakashi's next greatest secret, after Shisui's identity, and for all his sources not even Jiraiya knew where they - where Naruto - was. And though he had no right to resent Jiraiya for making him renounce his Clan name, that was a vicious victory Kakashi held close to his chest. "Get me the seal," said Kakashi, "and I'll tell you something you'll want to know about the Sanbi's jinchuuriki."

Jiraiya burst into laughter, an amused rumble. "All right, kid. I can whip something up. Send one of your hounds when you're back on the mainland, I'm sure they can find me."

"One more thing," Kakashi said. "Consider this an advance."

The Sannin squinted at him. "What now?"

"It's about the Akatsuki," Kakashi said.

Jiraiya's eyes widened for a split second. "What about them?" he asked, carefully casual.

Kakashi tapped the neck of his sake bottle. "This will be worth a lot towards our next business transaction."

Jiraiya waved an impatient hand. "Yeah, yeah. Out with it."

"One of the members is an Uchiha," said Kakashi, meeting Jiraiya's eyes. "In fact, not just a member - the puppetmaster."

Jiraiya's eyes narrowed and he sat back, rubbing his chin thoughtfully as he scrutinized Kakashi's face. "An Uchiha. Are you sure? How reliable is your source?"

"I am. And very," Kakashi said. "He's old and powerful. If you look into this further - be careful. I'm told that the still waters run deep with the Akatsuki."

Jiraiya blew out a short breath. "I'll give you that," he said. "Hell of an info byte, Kakashi."

Kakashi pushed his half-finished bottle across to Jiraiya, who arrested its slide with one hand. "It's late. I have a lot of stops to make on this side of the ocean." He picked up his mask, settling it back on his face, and ducked his head in a short bow. "Thank you for your time, Jiraiya-sensei."

Jiraiya crumpled the paper seal at the edge of the table and raised his cup in a salute as Kakashi stood. "Until next time," he said, low enough that the other bar occupants couldn't hear despite the broken seal. "Nanashi Kakashi."

Kakashi took a bottle of umeshu from the bar to go, and in a rare moment of self pity disguised as spoiling his kouhai, stopped by a late-night dessert stand to buy four skewers of dango that the owner baa-san helpfully stacked in a little tray made of banana leaves (complimentary). By the time Itachi returned, a silent shadow slipping through the window, Kakashi was sitting on his bed pressed up against the backboard in bare feet. He waved his stick at Itachi, gesturing at the table. "Picked up some dango," he said, his voice deceptively light. The umeshu had been tucked away into his pack, unopened.

Itachi's eyes travelled slowly between Kakashi and the tray of dessert. "Did the meeting go well?" he asked, neutral.

"As well as it could have," Kakashi said, tapping the tip of his skewer against his mouth. "Quiet patrol?"

"Aa," Itachi agreed, shedding the katana he wore. "There is a chuunin pair from Taki on the other side of town, but they appear to be keeping to themselves and avoiding attention."

Kakashi hummed acknowledgement. Itachi drifted towards the dango.

Kakashi flicked his empty skewer across the room to clatter precisely into the bathroom trash bin and leaned back into his pillows. Pillows were few and far between now to say nothing of actual beds, and it wouldn't be responsible of him not to enjoy one when he had the chance. He watched Itachi with a half lidded eye and resolved not to mention Itachi's ever evolving plot until he finished his dango.

Itachi promptly dashed Kakashi's attempt at keeping work and downtime separate by turning around and saying, "The Mangekyou."

"Ah," said Kakashi. That. "You've seen my Bingo Book entry. With a title like 'Friend-Killer,' I'm sure it's self-explanatory."

Itachi looked blank, which Kakashi was grateful for. "No, Taichou - how did you learn to master it? Clan records are flawed, but they implied that should an outsider come into possession of a Sharingan, they still would never be able to use it to its full potential."

"I haven't," Kakashi admitted. "I have no idea what it can do. My chakra reserves were too small when I first activated it, and since the Fall they've always been too low. The regular Sharingan drains me enough as is."

Itachi nibbled on his dango delicately. "You will need it to stand against me," he said simply. It wasn't pride or overconfidence or condescension; it was fact.

The Mangekyou was about as deep a clan secret as the Uchiha had, but there were scarce few of them left and pragmatism had always triumphed over tradition with Itachi. Kakashi sat up and tipped his head sideways to face him. "I know. What can you tell me?"

They returned to the road once dawn had broken over the rooftops, tracking their way north towards the Kumo border. Ten kilometers from Yu-Zaou, Kakashi twitched his fingers at Itachi in a sign and veered sharply into the woods. Konoha's shinobi as a rule favored treetop travel, and Kakashi bounded easily up into the branches as he set their course twenty degrees west.

Yu's forests were not quite like Konoha's - the trees much smaller, the leaves a different shape, the angle of the branches much sharper. Moisture drifted though the leaves, catching the sunlight and beading on the surface of Kakashi's mask and katana hilt.

At noon they crossed a river ten times the width of the streams they'd encountered before. White froth bubbled at the bases of the rocks, a fast current sweeping leaves past in a heartbeat. Kakashi paused, head tilting as he considered, and changed course to follow it along its length. When the sun had nearly reached the highest point in the sky, he turned them north again, then east and south.

Itachi made no comment on their looping, erratic route, even when they ended up in the woods just over ten kilometers from the western edge of Yu-Zaou once again.

"Let's make camp here," Kakashi said peaceably, and would have stuck his hands in his pockets but unlike Kiri's baggier Anbu uniform, Konoha's didn't have pockets.

"Hai," Itachi said automatically, but paused when Kakashi didn't move.

"I'm going to catch something," Kakashi said. "To eat."

Itachi blinked once, slowly. "I will...build a fire," he said, and said by anyone else, it would have been questioning.

"Thanks," said Kakashi. He turned and left.

War hadn't touched Yu, or at least not this part of Yu. The unafraid chirping of songbirds spilled into the air over Kakashi's head as he prowled along the forest ground, sliding his feet under loose leaf litter as he followed the sour-fur-grass-scent between the trees. A faint scrabble alerted him to his proximity to his prey, and he froze, tilting his nose up to pinpoint the source of the smell. He pounced blind, landing sideways on the trunk of a silvery beech and flicking a kunai end over end into the shrubs at the base of the tree. It sailed through the branches without nicking a single leaf, catching the rabbit in the head with the ring in the pommel as it twisted away. It went down in a tangle of limbs, twitching weakly as its flight instincts fought to break free of its daze, but Kakashi sprang down and snapped its neck in one smooth movement before it could find its feet.

He didn't need to hunt for food, not with Yu-Zaou so close, but returning to camp with just one rabbit felt inefficient and a little absurd, and the itch in his blood, hair-trigger instincts to track and kill, hadn't yet abated. He hung the rabbit on his belt and stalked back under the sun-dappled leaves as he let the sounds of the forest wash over him.

He traced his way back to Itachi with three rabbits and a squirrel in hand, more relaxed than he had been in over a year. Hunting other shinobi never quite compared to stalking prey intended as a meal, though Kakashi wasn't sure if that was his humanity's influence or that of his Hatake blood.

Itachi glanced up as Kakashi entered the clearing. "Taichou," he greeted. A small fire crackled in front of him, wisps of smoke curling up towards the sky, but other than setting his pack down, he hadn't made any further attempts at a camp. Which was good, despite Kakashi's vague instructions, because they still had quite a distance to travel before nightfall.

Kakashi started by cutting off a front paw from one of the rabbits, which earned him a bemused stare from Itachi. Shucking and gutting all four creatures from their pelts earned him a respite, and peeling the raw meat off the bones of the rabbit missing a foot while the rest cooked over the fire, whole, drew a look both curious and wary.

"Don't ask," Kakashi advised, and tossed the entire skeleton into the flames. The rabbits and the squirrel roasted, and after a while he rotated the skewers, and fat dripped and sizzled off the plump bodies into the fire. Kakashi picked one up, browned unevenly but just about cooked through, and Itachi mirrored him. The other two animals he propped to the side against a tree, and they steamed gently.

That left the skeleton in the fire still. The licking flames had eaten away its meaty protection, and dark smoke rolled off the remains as the skeleton charred down to the bone.

Itachi wrinkled his nose at the acrid stench, glancing at Kakashi as he folded his hands into seals for a water suiton, but Kakashi waved him off. "Leave it," he said. "Just let the fire die out by itself."

Yu's rabbits were fat and soft, and the tender flesh tore easily in Kakashi's mouth. Neither of them had thought to bring salt or any other seasonings, but the taste of fresh meat satisfied him enough that he had stripped it down to the bone in less than ten minutes.

Itachi ate more delicately, twisting off pieces bone by bone and dropping the finished remnants in a neat pile. As he nibbled, Kakashi fished the smouldering rabbit-skeleton out of the fire with a stick, rolling it onto its side to let it cool.

Itachi eyed him judgmentally. Kakashi ignored him and wrapped it in a thin cloth once he'd finished eating. "You are bringing that?" Itachi asked, and that he had chosen that of everything he'd done so far to ask about brought an amused quirk to Kakashi's mouth.

"Aa," he said lightly.

Kakashi imagined Itachi making a quiet report to Shikaku, having decided to switch his secret-keeper after watching his old Anbu captain go completely off his rocker: Kakashi-taichou meticulously removed a rabbit's paw and kept its burned bones for no discernible reason after leading us in a large circle from our initial starting point. I have come to the conclusion that he is of unsound mind and should be removed from his position and access to any sensitive information. Also, I will be defecting to a mercenary organization; please ensure my brother comes to no harm while I am off razing other villages.

Shikaku wouldn't have the slightest idea of what Kakashi was doing either. The Covert Intelligence Unit and its protocols were under Kakashi's purview; he'd switched it for the Guard Platoon when it became clear that Kakashi would have more mobility than Shikaku in the early days before the Kiri Civil War.

Kakashi tucked the wrapped skeleton into the pouch at his back, snagged the rabbit and squirrel pelts, and rose, dusting his hands off. "Move out in ten minutes. Incognito from here on out - no armor, no masks. Civilian cover."

Late afternoon's sun beat down above them by the time they approached the village, some thirty kilometers from Yu-Zaou, though with Kakashi's meandering lead, it had taken the same time as a distance five times as long.

"I'm going in," Kakashi informed Itachi, as the two of them hovered in the cover of the forest. "Don't bother making camp; I don't plan on staying long."

Itachi dipped his head. "I will patrol the perimeter, to ensure that no one followed our scent trail." He paused and added, carefully, "to ensure that no one you did not intend to followed our scent trail."

Ah. Itachi was sharp, as always, patient enough to have waited out Kakashi's seemingly aimless meander. "Thirty minutes," Kakashi said. "Meet back here, or send a crow if something comes up."

Itachi nodded again and vanished into the undergrowth with a sweep of his cloak. Kakashi waited until he could barely catch a whiff of his scent before sliding out from the protection of the trees' shadows.

He papered a light henge over himself and headed into the town. It was small, little more than a trading post - only a couple dozen buildings scattered on a dusty lot, and at least two of them were bars. A pair of horses gnawed contentedly from a sack of hay in a dirt corral, and a small murder of crows peered down from the peak of the inn's slanted roof. A pack of kids romped down an alley, kicking up clouds of dust beneath their feet, and on the other side of the main road, two men smoked cigarettes as they leaned up against the porch railing of an onsen. Kakashi nodded at the men as he wandered past, and they tipped their heads gravely in reply.

Kakashi's path took him to the center of the town and the general store, a solid-looking wooden structure labelled with a hand-carved sign sandwiched between a grocer and a leatherworker's shop. He glanced around, but the street was still. He turned back and pushed his way into the general store.

Dust motes danced in the sunlight spilling in through clean patches of grimy windows. The bell above the door chimed cheerfully as Kakashi stepped inside, and the must of wood-dirt-leather slammed him full in the face. Gradually, the scents equilibrated, and though the sawdust and oil were overwhelming, Kakashi could filter out strains of oats, hay, jerky, metal tools, and people who didn't shower particularly frequently.

A narrow shelf of paperbacks squeezed between a rack of seed packets and a display of potatoes teetered precariously over Kakashi's head, and he gave it a wary berth as he moved deeper into the store. Sewing equipment jostled for space with bowstrings and cans of paint and hide scrapers. A string of lights flickered along the walls, faint enough that they were all but drowned out by the rays of sunlight filtering through the glass. Kakashi bypassed a farmer peering at the racks of spare farming tool heads to weave his way to the back of the store, where the shopkeeper leaned against the wall behind the till and frowned at a crossword.

"Afternoon," said Kakashi. "I've pelts to trade, if you're interested."

The man grunted, squinting at Kakashi from the other side of the counter. He tossed his paper down, the pencil after it, and nodded at Kakashi. "Might be."

Kakashi reached into his pack and laid the rabbit pelts down one by one, then the squirrel, and then pulled the bundle of cloth from his back pouch and set it next to them.

The frown on the man's face deepened. When he unwrapped the cloth, the charred rabbit skeleton rolled out, flaking ash onto the wood. He stared at it for a long moment. "There was a rot in one of the barrels of oats last week," he said at last, glancing up at Kakashi. Though he didn't take his eyes off Kakashi, the shopkeeper's hands slid the skeleton back into the cloth, bundling it out of sight.

"Looks like you need some good luck," Kakashi suggested, and set the severed rabbit's foot on the counter.

The man stared at Kakashi still, folding his arms across his chest thoughtfully. "Looks like," he agreed. He swept the rabbit's foot under the counter and dropped the pelts in a bin. "Yeah, I'll trade." But before Kakashi could respond, he continued, "Tell you what, I got something I think you'll be interested in. Let me know what you think."

Kakashi frowned internally - a deviation from the script. "Sure, I'll take a look," he said.

The shopkeeper clumped into the back storeroom, the floorboards creaking under his weight. Kakashi turned slightly to check his blind spots in the guise of perusing the newspaper stand next to him. The farmer had chosen a hoe blade and drifted towards the coils of wire an aisle over, but otherwise, the store stood still and empty.

Approaching footsteps caught Kakashi's attention again as the shopkeeper returned. He tossed a brown paper back down on the counter. Kakashi glanced at him, and when the shopkeeper nodded, opened the bag.

"Cinnamon sticks," said the shopkeeper. "New shipment outta Cha no Kuni." He looked at Kakashi expectantly.

"Hmm," said Kakashi, examining the three dozen-some curls of bark in the bag. They were brown, wood-looking, and did indeed smell like cinnamon. "Cinnamon."

"Good stuff," the man said, staring at Kakashi. "Tea. Ciders. Chicken. Goes with everything."

Kakashi looked back down at the cinnamon. He folded the bag shut again. "I'll take it. And a paper."

The other man leaned over the counter to grab a newspaper from the stand, dropping it next to the cinnamon sticks. "You got 'bout a hundred ryou credit left. What else you want?"

"The lot in chipped beef," said Kakashi, tucking away the paper and the cinnamon in his pack. He peeled a handful of bills out onto the counter. "That, too."

The shopkeeper squinted. "Right. Thirty kilos of chipped beef."

Kakashi's pack thumped against his armor until he tightened the straps, the extra weight pressing down as he left the store and skirted the edges of the town. The air, warmed by the sun still a ways from the horizon, brushed Kakashi's face and stirred the hair beneath his bandana. Itachi hadn't returned, so Kakashi bounded lightly up the trunk of a massive oak and settled on one of the lower branches.

He fished the bag of cinnamon sticks out of his pack, chose one at random and set the rest aside. The thin curls of bark tucked tightly in on themselves, little flakes crumbling off in his hands. He turned it over and over, feeling the rough bark beneath his fingertips. Kakashi brought the stick up to his nose and inhaled, choking down the overwhelming spicy-woody aroma, and caught the faintest hint of paper.

He flipped it once in his hand, considering, and eyed it carefully, then pressed his mouth to the end and blew. A thin roll of paper shot out the other end into his hand.

Kakashi unfolded and unrolled the paper slowly, taking care to keep it from tearing. A cramped, precise script marched in even rows down the page, and Kakashi's eyes narrowed.

MISSION REPORT D-210, it read. Contact with enemies: none. Enemy combatants from origin: Konohagakure observed on five (5) occasions. Status of AT2: approximate age-appropriate growth achieved. It was a mission report, styled after Anbu mission logs. He skipped down to the bottom.

It was signed, Operative Cat-15.

Kakashi reached for another cinnamon stick and unrolled the next report. MISSION REPORT D-113. The next. MISSION REPORT D-0. 0124 HOURS reported breach of walls. Multiple assailants, origins unknown.

The first. The report from the night of the Fall.

Primary target Hyuuga Hinata located with escort Hyuuga Neji, unranked. Secondary target Hyuuga Hanabi located with escort Hyuuga Makoto, chuunin.

Kakashi closed his eyes and took a breath. He rolled the reports back up, tucking them back into their cinnamon stick sheaths and bundling them all into the paper bag.

Itachi found him in the tree, his bag repacked and slung over his shoulders. "Taichou?" he prompted, tilting his head up to watch Kakashi curiously.

Kakashi dropped down lightly. "Ah. Is the forest clear?"

"Hai. No sign of recent shinobi activity," Itachi reported.

Kakashi glanced him up and down. "I'm dragging you around the country and abandoning you on the outskirts of town," he observed, almost an apology.

"It is necessary," Itachi returned, but Kombu, perched on his shoulder, scolded Kakashi with a reproachful caw. "Kombu," Itachi warned, frowning. The crow batted him over the head with a wing as he took off sulkily.

"Dissent in the ranks?" Kakashi asked dryly.

"Kombu is particularly fond of of Sasuke," Itachi said, watching the crow wing away through the trees. "My crows do not understand that I must leave to protect him."

"It's a human construct," Kakashi said. "War. Psychological warfare is as alien to them as a world without war is to us."

Itachi did not respond, his eyes shadowed and distant.

"Let's go," said Kakashi. "We have one more stop tonight."

The sunset over the shrine illuminated the torii, its faded paint restored to brilliant vermillion for an hour and a half before darkness fell. Kakashi paused before the gate and bowed before continuing on. He climbed the front steps slowly until Itachi stopped. Kakashi turned, and before Itachi could offer to patrol the forest or make a base camp, said, "If I die, someone should know the protocol to send a message from here."

Itachi's eyebrows knit together. "Surely there are less volatile shinobi to entrust this information to. You are aware of my situation and the dangers it will pose to myself and all of Hanabi-ha."

Kakashi slid a sideways glance at him. "A man outside can be useful. You're the best of us, Itachi," he said. "You'll find a way to make it work."

Itachi nodded slowly. "Very well," he said. "I will follow you."

The kannushi waiting for them at the top of the stairs wore the traditional white garments of his station, his hands folded neatly into his sleeves. Wrinkles lined his careworn face and his dark hair was streaked with silver. "Welcome," he said, his voice low and smooth. He bowed in greeting, which Kakashi and Itachi returned. "You have come far, travellers."

"We are grateful for the respite," Kakashi said.

"It is good to see young people who still remember the gods," the kannushi said. "What brings you to this humble shrine today?"

"My father used to bring me here," Kakashi answered, glancing past the man to the doors of the shrine. "He passed away a few years ago. My cousin - " he dropped a hand down on Itachi's shoulder, " - recently came to stay with me, so I thought I'd bring him to greet my father."

"I see," the kannushi said. "Very well. You may enter. Will you require a guide?"

"I know my way around. Thank you," Kakashi said.

The shrine constituted two floors, a sprawling yet empty building carefully kept if worn by time. Kakashi bypassed the entryway and the main hall, skirted the atrium, and turned down a narrow hallway lit only by the sunset streaming in from the window at the far end. Two doors lined the walls on either side, and he chose the door to the left of the window.

They were greeted by a simple painting of Izanami, black ink in delicate strokes over rough paper. A shelf protruded from the wall, holding only a single candle. A saucer filled with water, a stick of ink, and an inkstone sat in a neat row on the low table beneath the shelf, and a stack of translucent rice paper and a pair of brushes lay beside them on the table.

As Itachi closed the door behind them, Kakashi knelt at the low table and reached for the inkstone. Slowly, precisely, he ground the stone and mixed the ink.

Chichi-ue, he wrote with careful brushstrokes. Father.

Kakashi had never really known how to grieve his father.

Mourning Minato-sensei and Kushina was easy because the entire village had been mourning. Everyone had lost someone; some had lost everyone. Kakashi had not been unique in his grief, throwing himself into his missions and spending sleepless nights fracturing under the weight of his loss. The severing of his greatest anchors to Konoha left him adrift as he spiralled, but others were falling just as hard, just as fast.

Mourning Rin and Obito was simple because Rin lay buried beneath a headstone in Konoha and Obito's name was engraved on the Memorial Stone. There was no shame in mourning heros, shinobi who had given their lives for their village. Kakashi could look in the mirror with both eyes open and think, That's Obito, could let the harsh burn bleed crimson into a vicious pinwheel and think, That's Rin. Their deaths were Kakashi's burden, his regret, his guilt to bear, and grieving them was not only expected, it was right.

But Kakashi's father had died disgraced, not by an enemy's hand in battle, but by his own after he failed his mission, his Village, and his Kage. To Konoha, his death was not a tragedy but a relief. How could Kakashi mourn a man like that?

So, for years, he hadn't, just locked the grief away with the resentment and ignored it when he could, endured it when he couldn't. But after Obito, after Rin, Kakashi had carefully unburied his father's memory, remembered his smile, the sense of pack he held for all the Village, remembered his love. And even after losing the first and last things his father had left him all at once, Kakashi thought his father would understand that he had done it for his own pack, for Konoha.

Kakashi had never called his father anything as formal as 'chichi-ue,' but here, now, he mourned in his own way.

Itachi's eyes prickled against his back, curious and cautious and silent. "'Ojii-san' and 'omago' are warnings of duress," Kakashi explained, keeping his focus on his work. "'Sobo' and 'Aneki' are signals to freeze operations. 'Chichi-ue' and 'kanai' are summons."

"Summons," Itachi echoed. "You have operatives stationed nearby."

"Aa. Yoichi-san, the kannushi, serves as the gatekeeper," Kakashi said. "Any meeting request is facilitated through him." He set the brush back down and sat back on his heels to let the ink dry. "He went undercover on the Yondaime's orders a few days before the Kyuubi attack, but officially, he's listed as KIA. Neither Sandaime-sama nor Danzou received the briefing on his mission due to the timing, but I was a member of the Yondaime's security detail that day."

Funny how it became easier and easier to bring them up in conversation so casually, like Kakashi hadn't failed two Kages in a row, hadn't allowed two Hokages who let him into their confidence and their inner circles die on his watch. Like any of this would have happened if Kakashi hadn't been a little stronger, a little faster, a little smarter. And yet he was poised at the back of another Successor. History repeated itself, and Kakashi had a nagging doubt that this time could easily end the same way.

"Taichou," said Itachi from where he knelt a pace back, interrupting Kakashi's train of thought. "Thank you."

Kakashi blinked. "For?"

"I am glad to have had the opportunity to serve on your team," Itachi answered, with an unusually open sincerity in his eyes. "Both in Anbu and Hanabi-ha. I am relieved that it was you I followed into battle."

Shinobi who followed Kakashi into battle didn't have a great record either. "Right," said Kakashi, and snagged the sheet with the dried calligraphy as he pushed himself to his feet. "It's almost time."

It was not a retreat.

Itachi trailed him to the courtyard behind the shrine. Dusk had settled, and besides the faintest hint of orange on the horizon, only torchlight cut through the darkness; Kakashi could barely see his own feet in front of him. Like most doors in the shrine, the shed was not locked. Kakashi ducked inside. Sky lanterns lined the shelves in neat rows, delicate rice paper stretched over bamboo frames, each carefully handmade by the kannushi and miko who kept the shrine.

The table was narrow and low to the ground to fit the space, and held only a small clay pot and a blunt spreading knife. Kakashi chose a lantern, opened the pot, and used the rice glue to plaster the paper with Chichi-ue to its side.

"This is quite blatant," Itachi noted, leaning into the doorway to examine the lanterns through the gloom. "The messages are hidden in plain view."

"Lanterns are frequently released from this shrine, though they don't have too many visitors," Kakashi said, replacing the lid on the glue pot when his eye started to water. "Most have names written on them, to petition Izanami-sama to guard their passage into death and their rebirth." He stood, taking the lantern with him, and Itachi stepped back to let him pass.

He paused for a moment at the corner of the courtyard and tipped his head back to watch the encroaching night. The sky darkened before his eye, the transition imperceptible as the pinpricks of starlight faded into being. Yu's night wind picked up, tugging gently at the edges of his cloak and the ends of his hair exposed beneath the bandana.

"I cannot remember the last time I looked to the stars without seeking a direction," Itachi confessed behind him quietly.

Kakashi hummed agreement. "It's a good thing the stars don't have all the answers, or we'd forever be looking up." He reached up for a torch, lifting it out of its ring in the wall, and lit the wick of the lantern with a deft flick of his wrist. He replaced the torch distractedly, the lantern cradled in one arm as it warmed under his hand.

"Is there any particular way that should be released?" Itachi asked, the golden glow of the flame dancing in his dark eyes.

"No," Kakashi answered, lifting the lantern to shoulder height. "As long as it clears the trees." He let go.

The sky lantern gained height ponderously at first, then with increasing grace as the air caught inside warmed. Kakashi watched it go, a sentimental twist in his throat at the sight of Chichi-ue rising into the night sky - a golden light, alone in the darkness.

He inhaled a breath a little too sharply and disguised it by turning smoothly. "That's done. Come on, we should get some rest."

Candles and glass lanterns lined the inside of the shrine, illuminating their path as Kakashi traced their steps back towards the front entrance. The kannushi had returned, or perhaps he had never left. He waited for them with his arms tucked behind his back, examining the likeness of Izanami carved in pale marble that hung over the doorway. The goddess wielded the Amenonuhoko in one hand, the shaft of the great spear resting along her upraised arm and its blade downturned with her face.

"Not many still follow the old traditions," the kannushi said without moving. "Yet Izanami-sama will always take and give." A pause. The kannushi turned towards them then, still-sharp eyes resting on each of their faces for a lingering moment. "It is late. Perhaps you would like to stay the night," Yoichi suggested placidly.

Kakashi offered him a half-bow. "We would not want to impose."

"No imposition if you are invited guests," the kannushi said. "Come, I will show you to a room."

Sleeping quarters lined the hallway up a rickety set of stairs, the boards warped from thousands of feet and decades of wear. Kakashi matched Yoichi's quiet footsteps, and their footfalls echoed faintly in the stairwell.

The kannushi slid open the shoji door just at the top of the stairs. "Please make yourselves comfortable," he said, and dipped his head when Kakashi bowed.

"Thank you for your hospitality," Kakashi said.

As soon as Itachi shut the door behind him, Kakashi slipped a paper seal from his back pouch and ignited it with a spark of chakra. Oto glowed at its center, sound, encircled in a triskelion formed of, at its base, shuushi, suitoru, and azamuku - stop, absorb, and deceive. "That will hide sound, but not chakra," he warned.

Itachi did not look up from the futon he was unfolding. "We have little time remaining, but working with the Mangekyou is better done with fewer chances for interruption."

Kakashi swept the cloak off his shoulders and shrugged off his travel pack. "I take it you have another topic you want to go over tonight."

Itachi reached for the second futon, laying it at an angle to the first that would give them both room to draw their concealed weapons without striking each other. "It is in regards to the event of my...exit." He hesitated, staring down at the blankets.

Kakashi smiled humorlessly. "I imagine you won't have much opportunity to consult with anyone else, so you may as well take advantage of a sounding board, since you can. What's your plan?"

"We established that my defection will impugn Hanabi-ha," Itachi said. "However, were I to appear to be colluding with a high-ranking member of the Hanran, the political battlefield will be levelled after my imminent departure."

Kakashi tapped thoughtful fingers on the top of his pack, leaning back. Itachi was proposing doubling the stakes and the payout alike. One misstep, and Hanabi-ha would be on the hook for both whatever damage Itachi's exit mission did and the murder of a Hanran commanding officer - because there was no way they could allow that shinobi to live if there was even the slightest chance to disprove the lies Kakashi and Itachi spun. "Do you have a target in mind?"

"I have several candidates to consider," said Itachi. Even seated on the ground his back was ramrod straight and his hands loose and easy on his thighs, as though he were at a tea ceremony and not choosing which of their allies to frame and dispose of.

Nothing less than the betrayal of a Hanran captain could balance the scales in their favor. Kakashi shifted to mirror Itachi, running down the list in his mind. "Michishio Yuusei. Ankan Magari. Anyone I'm missing?"

"High caste captains are the obvious choice," Itachi acknowledged. "However, one from a lower caste and Terumi's most trusted inner circle will both arouse and deter suspicion in its audacity: Higata Beniko or Sakai Hanzei."

"Higata watched her back in the fourth level catacombs, and Sakai was one of the first to defect. He worked his way up to captain from chuunin," Kakashi said. "It'll be a tough sell."

Approaching footsteps stalled their conversation. A light knock rapped on the doorframe. Itachi reached for the seal, sliding it under the futon and crumpling the paper to disrupt it as Kakashi rose to open the door. "Kannushi-san," greeted Kakashi with a slight bow.

"I took the liberty of asking the kitchen for a meal for yourself and your cousin." Yoichi offered Kakashi the tray. "It is humble fare, but we at the shrine find it satisfies our appetites."

"Thank you," said Kakashi, taking the food. "We didn't intend to cause you so much trouble."

"The food was no trouble. You are a long way from home," Yoichi said gravely, and though his hands were steady as he tucked them back into his sleeves, his eyes were distant. "There is little I can do to assuage that."

Kakashi woke with the dawn. Itachi, his legs folded beneath him in light meditation, opened one eye as Kakashi sat up. "Quiet," Itachi reported. "Several kannushi and miko woke about an hour ago, but the remainder are still asleep. No notable activity."

"I hope you don't mind the quiet," Kakashi said, his voice still rough from sleep. He reached automatically for his canteen.

Itachi shifted, rolling out the muscles in his shoulders. "How much time do you anticipate before the summons is answered?"

"Not long," Kakashi answered. He passed the canteen to Itachi. "If there's no response by the second night, we'll send up another sky lantern."

Itachi tilted his head contemplatively. "Is it safe to remain in one place for so long? The trail we left may draw hunters to the shrine."

"Aa," Kakashi allowed. "However, we left little more than scent, and not many will recognize us by that alone. Slipping away shouldn't be too difficult as long as we haven't been identified."

Kakashi, on his own, was very difficult to catch for the same reasons that made him one of Konoha's top tracking and assassination specialists, heightened Hatake senses notwithstanding. He had probably trained whichever Anbu hunter had ended up replacing him.

Itachi was no slouch himself. Even at eleven, when he'd first joined Kakashi's team, he had quickly proven his abilities in stealth and infiltration. He could vanish like a ghost from the forest or the middle of a town, and those who did manage to track him generally didn't come out the other side alive.

But paranoia, not arrogance, kept them alive. They could rest here but they wouldn't relax, always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Fortunately, it didn't come to that. At sunset, after a day of slow katas performed in a cramped room and silent meditation in one of the smaller worship haiden, Yoichi knocked on their door once more. There was another chakra signature with him, one whose scent Kakashi didn't immediately recognize, and from the sound of their footsteps and the wood beneath their feet, they were smaller in build than the kannushi. He glanced at Itachi, who rose slowly and slipped to the corner closest to the door, a hand tucked behind him discreetly above the holster concealed at the small of his back. Itachi nodded once.

Kakashi opened the door. "Kannushi-san."

"You have a guest," Yoichi said gravely, giving Kakashi a nod. "This is Eifuku-san. She is a candlemaker from the town of Kounon. Perhaps you would like to discuss with her the creation of a memorial candle for your father."

"I appreciate your thoughtfulness, Kannushi-san," Kakashi said, bowing slightly to both him and the young woman at his shoulder, who inclined her head gracefully. "Please, come in, Eifuku-san."

Kakashi recognized the kunoichi on sight, though he knew her as Nakada Teishi, a Shinrei-bu chuunin who'd finished her two-year Anbu enlistment when Kakashi was nineteen. He had led the extraction team for her missions on at least three occasions.

She waited until he had closed the door behind them and activated another oto- seal before greeting him with, "Fallen blossoms don't return to the branch."

"So wake from death and return to life," replied Kakashi.

She smiled. "Hatake-taichou. I didn't expect to see you here."

"Teishi," Kakashi returned. "It's just Kakashi." Itachi's narrow-eyed stare prickled at his back, ever alert, but he held his tongue. "I'm filling in this time. You remember Itachi."

Teishi's eyes jumped to Itachi's face and skittered away. "I do."

Itachi let his hand drop from his holsters slowly, moving to seat himself on his futon with carefully projected movements.

"Have you been well?" Kakashi asked. He tucked his hands in his pockets and ambled over to the edge of his own futon. "Sit," he invited, sinking down crosslegged. Teishi sat, reluctantly, crouched back on her heels with a direct line towards the door. "I don't remember you being the point of contact out here."

"It's a recent development," Teishi answered. "I was the backup. Kouji...Kouji got caught in a Konoha-Kumo skirmish up north. He didn't make it. The team's down a member, but with the inactivation orders, we didn't get a replacement." She glanced at him. "If you're here, you must have news from Kiri."

"This is the official reactivation order," Kakashi confirmed. "The Yondaime Mizukage is dead; the Kiri Civil War is over."

Teishi huffed out a half-laugh, half-sigh. "I don't believe it. You're actually insane, no offense." She ran a hand through her short-cropped hair. "Halfway home," she said, a crooked grin spreading across her face. She paused, and her face froze in a rictus of trepidation. "My team was talking and there's a ninety-two percent chance Terumi Mei will betray us based on Kiri sociocultural patterns, and if you're here, that's an opportunity to make a move with two major players out of the picture. Did they try to backstab you yet? "

"Immediately," Itachi said dryly.

"It was a very half-hearted attempt," Kakashi interjected reassuringly. "Terumi only tried to have me killed once, and she did seem at least a little contrite about it afterwards."

Itachi frowned. "That is likely because she wishes to - "

"She's made some concessions to Tsunade-hime," Kakashi interrupted, before Itachi could finish explaining Mei's frighteningly amorous intentions for him. "The situation is stable, so we're reopening communications with the covert teams on the main continent."

"Copy that," said Teishi, eyeing Itachi with more curiosity than wariness now.

Itachi blinked at Kakashi innocently.

"What's the situation here?" Kakashi asked, giving Itachi a droll stare before returning his attention to Teishi.

"In Yu?" Teishi chewed her lip. "Western Yu is the highway of choice for Konoha and Kumo to strike at each other. There's a lot of shinobi traffic, but there were only a handful of skirmishes that spilled over the borders from either Hi no Kuni or Kaminari no Kuni through Shimo. Eastern Yu is pretty calm, apart from the refugees fleeing from the west. This side of the country is ignoring the hostilities as best they can, since Yu's official stance is neutrality. I don't have the status on any other operatives, but apart from - from Kouji, my team is operational."

Kakashi nodded. "Spread the word. Orders will start coming out in the next few weeks." He hesitated and glanced at Itachi. "Give us a minute, Itachi."

Itachi dipped his head. He rose without complaint, shrugging his cloak on over his shoulders and sliding out the door. It shut behind him with a soft tap, and his footsteps faded down the stairs. Teishi watched him go with a furrow between her eyebrows.

"Teishi, I'm giving you a codephrase," Kakashi said, and Teishi's full attention snapped back to him. "Itachi will have the other half. No matter what you hear about him, if he gives you the other half, you do as he says. Do you understand?"

Teishi's frown deepened. "Hai," she replied automatically. "But - "

"Especially if I'm dead," Kakashi added, and Teishi balked.

"Hatake-taichou - !"

"Kakashi," he corrected again. "Teishi, think about it," Kakashi said. "Tell me truthfully if you can do this without telling anyone else - not even your team."

Teishi's eyes flickered up to him and away, uncertain and electrified and just a touch resentful. "I can't be your first choice for this," she said, stalling.

"You're the only choice," Kakashi said relentlessly. "We don't have a lot of time. You just need to know that I trust Itachi, and I trust you." He glanced over with a hooded eye. "I can trust you, can't I?"

"Of course," Teishi said, the honest anxiety in her voice enough to convince Kakashi of her sincerity. "I mean, I'm just a chuunin - I'm not even supposed to be here - "

"You're supposed to be in Konoha. We all are," Kakashi broke in, and watched her face fall in the split second before she composed herself. "If anything happens to the troops in Kiri, Itachi will be the ranking member of Hanabi-ha, but he won't be in a position to take command directly."

Teishi was an information and infiltration specialist; she could hear what Kakashi wasn't saying. "Why are you telling me this?" Teishi asked, a hint of desperation tainting her voice. "You barely know me, I could be a mole. Or I could be captured and tortured or killed. Shouldn't whoever you choose should be at least a tokujo, if not a jounin?"

"Don't get caught. You're a capable kunoichi, I wouldn't have asked you otherwise." He paused for a beat. "And I know you're not a mole because you defected after Danzou killed your last tie to the Village, but you still have family in Hanabi-ha that you want to protect."

Teishi's younger brother had made the mistake of expressing his suspicions over the Sandaime's assassination at the wrong place at the wrong time. His arrest and those of three others was followed by a swift execution for the crimes of sedition, mutiny, and conspiracy to commit treason. Their older sister and surrogate mother, in the middle of a two-week mission when the Fall happened, had taken her entire team AWOL to the assembling yet-unnamed Hanabi-ha rather than return to Konoha.

Hatred and grief, ugly and dark, shadowed Teishi's eyes. She answered him with a bitter smile. "Precise as always, Kakashi-taichou. You're right. I can do it."

"Halfway home," Kakashi reminded her, relief and regret loosening the tension in his chest.

Teishi nodded silent agreement, but the exhaustion slumping her shoulders overpowered her earlier thrill.

The cramped room was windowless, but the night was slipping past. They all needed rest. Kakashi said, "Your prompt is, 'A candle to light candles and burn itself.'" The spirit of self-sacrifice. "His response will be, 'No fear of a lack of wood to burn in the green hills.'" There is always hope.

"Acknowledged. And, Kakashi-taichou - " The corner of her mouth quirked up, reluctantly sardonic. "It is good to see you again."

Under the scarf looped around the bottom half of his face and beneath the mask below that, Kakashi smiled too.

High noon saw Kakashi and Itachi depart from the shrine, Teishi having preceded them in the early hours of the morning when the birds began their daily chorus. Kakashi set a course that did not waver this time, and as the first hour passed, the furrow between Itachi's eyebrows deepened at their heading. "It can't be avoided," Kakashi said, breaking the silence that had hung between them since leaving Izanami's shrine.

"Entering the region where the Konoha and Kumo borders are closest while maintaining a civilian cover will be difficult," Itachi mused. "From Teishi-san's account, the situation is volatile and the boundaries fluid. The shinobi on either side will be looking specifically for disguised shinobi." He slanted a glance at Kakashi. "If we exchange the cover for the ability to wear weapons unconcealed, we can decrease both our travel and reaction times."

"Fine," Kakashi agreed easily. "If we're spotted, the Anbu uniform should give anyone pause, Kiri or Konoha."

They paused on the ground under the cover of a large, springy bush dotted with tiny leaves, and while Itachi kept watch, Kakashi shed the baggy civilian shirt and trousers, exchanging them for the familiar weight of his armor and katana. Vambraces and gloves followed, then the fastenings on his sandals. He hooked the old cat-mask over his face and took up the guard so Itachi could do the same.

Itachi's armor hung on him loosely, the shoulders just a little too wide and the bottom edge overlapping the top half of his belt. Sixteen was still on the young side for Anbu, and Itachi was shorter and slighter than other shinobi his age. Stealing his current set of armor had taken time and patience as well as the mortification and possibly reprimand or demotion of a hapless Anbu operative caught alone in a seedy motel room. Kakashi stepped over to tighten the straps Itachi couldn't reach.

Kakashi shifted the harness for his own katana to settle more comfortably on his shoulders as Itachi adjusted his mask, the final piece of the uniform. "I'll take point," said Kakashi. "Maintain silence from here out."

Itachi's mask dipped acknowledgement, and Kakashi turned and leapt for the trees.

The massive trees of Hi no Kuni dwarfed Yu's forests by far, and rather than the comfortably broad boughs one could use to travel in a relatively straight line, moving by the trees here needed more dexterity and concentration. The path Kakashi chose was erratic by necessity, ricocheting off the sturdiest forks between trunk and branch so as not to rattle them.

The glint of metal flashed in the corner of his eye, and Kakashi held a hand up as he pulled up short. Itachi landed in the next tree over, clinging to the trunk with chakra as he melted into the dappled shadows. Kunai littered the ground, patches of rust-dry blood discoloring the dirt and bark, and a length of wire tangled in the grasses.

Kakashi strained his nose and ears but sensed nothing out of the ordinary but the faint tang of old blood, with the sour twist that precluded death. Life negative, he signed at Itachi, who parroted the same back at him. Hold position, Kakashi directed, and dropped to the forest floor. He prowled among the deitrius of battle. Leaf litter had been trampled into crumbs underfoot, branches snapped and leaves bruised, but despite a patch of dried blood too large for the shinobi from whom it had come to have survived, there was no sign of anyone still present, dead or alive. The body must have been removed when the battle ended.

Clear, he signed at Itachi. Then, forward.

The battle sites they encountered grew messier and more frequent. They had yet to find a corpse, or even a live shinobi but Kakashi did encounter an arm and a hand, severed just above the elbow and beginning to rot. Ants swarmed the rancid flesh, and Kakashi wrinkled his nose and backed away. The trees here were scorched and gouged, entire swathes burned or felled.

At nightfall, they set up a camp without a fire at the edges of a stream from which wisps of steam curled off the surface. Kakashi didn't dare risk the chakra spike to activate a warning seal with both Konoha and Kumo teams on the prowl; Itachi didn't summon his crows for the same reason.

Kakashi leaned back where he sat, feeling the knobs in the wood dig into his back. Night here was a little more tense, a little more silent, but the forest was the same. "Tonight isn't a Mangekyou night either," he said, barely louder than a breath."

"No," Itachi agreed just as quietly from Kakashi's right. A long pause followed, and Kakashi waited patiently for Itachi to choose his next words. A breeze rustled the leaves above them, and for a moment, they both strained their ears for any hint of movement camouflaged in the sound. "I have a concern in regards to my brother," Itachi said at last after the trees had settled.

"Specifically?" Kakashi prompted, though inwardly he cringed. Kakashi wasn't one to offer empty platitudes, just couldn't, and he doubted Itachi's concern was easily amended.

"There are certain gaps in his knowledge and in that of all the children," Itachi said.

Kakashi didn't spend much time with the children, having foisted babysitting duties off to every other member of his team. He certainly wasn't the best judge of what they should or shouldn't already know.

"Regarding the Fall," Itachi added.

An impending sense of disaster crept to the edges of Kakashi's mind. "Specifically?" he repeated. Hedging was unlike Itachi, though all bets were off where his brother was concerned. This was as close to squirming as Kakashi had ever seen him, and he turned to seek out Itachi's masked face in the dark.

Itachi met his querying look with eyes that glinted in the holes of his mask when he blinked. "They only recently learned that you were framed for the Sandaime's assassination, and they know Tsunade-sama is the leader of Hanabi-ha, but not that she is the Sandaime's rightfully appointed successor. They know that they, or the Lost Four, were smuggled out of Konoha, but not what they mean to Danzou and the resistance. They also know that the Uchiha were massacred," Itachi said, finally blunt, "but they don't know who killed them, or what happened to the Nara."

"Ah," said Kakashi. He stared into the darkness bleakly. War was never the best place to raise children, the best excuse they had in the name of distraction, but the idea that nobody had ever really sat the kids down to explain the Fall was equal parts ridiculous, appalling, and understandable. "Those are some rather large gaps." Itachi continued to watch him expectantly as Kakashi followed the thought to its inevitable conclusion. "You plan on filling some in before you leave," Kakashi noted.

"It will make the separation easier," Itachi said, his eyes resolved, "if I tell them that I killed the Uchiha."

Kakashi's eyes slid sideways to Itachi. "You want them to fear you? You want Sasuke to hate you?"

"Hatred will protect him." Itachi met Kakashi's scrutiny steadily. "Too much knowledge is dangerous, and he is not strong enough to protect himself yet. It is better for him not to miss my presence or the memory of me once I leave."

Kakashi frowned. He was well aware that he was not the gold standard for anything involving emotions, but...that...didn't quite sound right. In theory, evoking a negative last memory should lessen or even sever the attachment, but while the logic was sound, people tended to react unpredictably. "You're sure that's what you want to do."

Itachi nodded.

Well, Kakashi wasn't an expert. Itachi wasn't either, but he seemed like he had the situation under control.

The faintest brush of Itachi's hand on his shoulder jolted Kakashi from asleep to fully awake, with a spike of adrenaline shooting ice-cold down his spine. His chakra wrenched, and not a second later a trio of kunai impaled the mizu bunshin that had taken his place. Itachi vanished into the shadows in a blink, and Kakashi sent a second bunshin out to gauge the field.

"Identify yourselves," Kakashi's bunshin ordered, shifting into a light crouch with one hand on the hilt of his katana as the attacking shinobi alighted in a loose circle around him.

"Akimichi Shitou, Gouki Platoon," rumbled the jounin in the lead, with a voice like falling rocks. He planted his feet firmly where he stood, and his grey plated armor stood out among the faded green flak jackets of the rest of the shinobi. Eight total; two teams. He swept his bo staff out to the side, a warning more than a threat. "We weren't told of any active operations in this sector."

A platoon named for fortitude - these teams were a border patrol, most likely, sweeping the territory Konoha had staked out in Yu as Kumo must have done in Shimo. "No, you weren't," Kakashi's bunshin answered curtly. "This is a sensitive mission. Move along, and next time, watch the friendly fire."

Shitou hesitated, studying the armor and mask.

A ninken barked from behind Kakashi, high and warning, and he gritted his teeth even as its Inuzuka partner snapped, "Hatake!" and lunged.

Itachi's fireballs streaked through the shadows on the far side of the clearing, crimson concealing the white-hot cores until the crash of impact, and the teams scattered. Kakashi whipped out two more mizu bunshin in quick succession to intercept the Inuzuka and her ninken, unsheathed his katana with a hiss, and launched himself at the Akimichi.

Jounin earned their rank honestly, and Shitou caught the blade on his staff with a ringing crash despite the considerable force Kakashi had used. Kakashi disengaged, swinging around lightning-fast with a backhanded slash for the gap between his armor plates. Shitou blocked with a single fist, the metal plating the back of the glove shielding his hand from the blade, and spun his staff in the other.

Kakashi leapt backwards, but Shitou swung hard and fast and caught him in the ribs midstep. Kawarimi. Behind him, his clone exploded into a spray of water as Shitou's bo completed its arc. The Inuzuka yelped, alarmed, as Kakashi twisted coming out of the substitution, and she swerved hard to avoid his scything blade. Another substitution, and the hilt of his katana cracked down on her ninken's skull, sending the hound tumbling into the dirt with a whine that cut off abruptly.

"Get away from her!" the Inuzuka snarled, pouncing for Kakashi with clawed hands as her canines elongated in her mouth. Chakra bubbled into the air around her, seething from her form.

Kakashi pivoted out of the way, then flipped backwards over Shitou's head just as the jounin slammed an oversized fist into the ground where he'd been standing. The ground rattled, and the spindly Yu trees groaned and topped around the point of impact. Kakashi landed in a light crouch, splitting off another bunshin and melting backwards into the shadows as it darted forward to meet the other jounin just as Kakashi's other bunshin sprang to intercept the Inuzuka.

The last two members of Shitou's team, a taijutsu specialist and trap specialist, tag-teamed Kakashi's first decoy bunshin without success, loops of wire closing around empty air as the clone twisted and ducked just out of reach with every strike, and some dozen meters away, he caught a glimpse of Itachi flitting through the trees, luring the other team on a fruitless hunt.

The Inuzuka's bunshin opponent splashed into a puddle as she struck a vicious blow in its midsection, and when her eyes flicked directly to Kakashi, led by her nose, he formed yet another mizu bunshin. Her answering snarl was wild and frustrated, and she pounced furiously. Kakashi backpedaled as the clone intercepted her, leaping up and ricocheting off a tree trunk as his hands flashed through seals.

"Raiton: Gyomou," he intoned, and with a hiss-snap a net woven from strands of lightning spewed out into the clearing just as each of his mizu bunshin lunged for their opponents in synchrony. Kakashi slammed an extra jolt of chakra into the jutsu just as it caught its targets.

The mizu bunshin exploded into sizzling balls of lightning and steam, and raw screams shattered the illusion of stillness in the night as the clearing lit up in crackling white-blue. The raiton extinguished abruptly, darkness rushing back in accompanied by the stench of burnt cloth and flesh.

Kakashi crouched where he was, straining his senses for any sign of a counterattack. He opened Obito's Sharingan tentatively, eyeing the wisps of chakra coming off the prone bodies scattered across the forest floor, the steady if dim lights at their cores. Nothing moved, and he let out a quiet breath. He stood and sheathed his blade back over his shoulder.

Itachi joined him as he picked his way out of the scorched clearing, unruffled and marred only by a narrow scratch down the front of his armor.

"Status on yours?" Kakashi asked, temporarily giving up the order on silence since they had somewhat disrupted it already.

"Neutralized," Itachi answered. His eyes pinched slightly in a frown. "Are you injured, Taichou?"

Kakashi bit down the instinctive no to take stock, and only then did he register that the dull ache in his only-slightly-not-unbroken arm had sharpened into a - a pinch. "No," he said anyways, giving his arm a betrayed stare.

"I will retrieve your sling from your pack," Itachi said placidly, ignoring him. Kakashi transferred his stare to Itachi but let him take it. After the violence of battle, the forest yawned forebodingly empty around them and his back prickled under eyes that weren't there.

His memory slapped him upside the head and he said, "Stay here. I'll be right back."

He doubled back through the woods before Itachi could argue, following Itachi's scent to his last battlefield. A shinobi, probably chuunin, sprawled where he had fallen, his head narrowly missing a half-buried boulder jutting out of the ground. Kakashi rolled him over and the man's head lolled back to bare the dark bruise around his throat where Itachi must have choked him unconscious, but his chest rose and fell gently. He wore the standard Konohan uniform - chuunin-jounin blues, military green flak jacket, and a Leaf hitai-ate on a dark band.

"Sorry," Kakashi told him, and tugged at the knot of the hitai-ate. It loosened. Kakashi pulled it off entirely and stood to make his way back to Itachi, prize in hand.

Itachi glanced at the hitai-ate and offered Kakashi's sling and travel pack to him. "Reinforcements may arrive shortly," he warned.

"Then we should go," said Kakashi, shrugging his pack on and ignoring the sling to tie the hitai-ate over his forehead, under his cat-mask.

Itachi held the sling out insistently and did not move.

"That will interfere with my ability to fight," Kakashi said.

"The probability that we encounter an enemy or enough enemies that you cannot defeat them with one hand, or I with two, is statistically low," Itachi said, and on anyone else that assuredness would be arrogance. "The probability that you re-injure your fractured humerus is significantly higher."

It would take half a second to cut the sling off in the event of another attack. Kakashi weighed the pros and cons with the implacability of Itachi's face and reluctantly took the sling.

And burned it.

No, he didn't. But he wanted to.

Having successfully caused more of a disturbance than intended, Kakashi and Itachi opted not to make camp, continuing further north towards the border with Shimo. They crossed a wide, flat river, coming up the opposite bank some hundred meters west from where they entered, and twenty minutes later, darted through the misty screen atop another river until Kakashi determined that the two teams they'd left behind would be hard-pressed to track them even if the Inuzuka pair recovered in time to pick up the trail from the battlefield.

He motioned Itachi back towards the south bank, and they slipped easily into old Anbu habits, progressing through the trees in staggered advances. The moon still hung high above the trees, flickering between the leaves above them as they moved. Kakashi's steps fell noiselessly, finding protruding roots and stone instead of fallen leaves or brittle twigs, but despite the cover of the night and silence, Kakashi's chakra coiled, tense, just under his skin.

Itachi's hand flashed ahead of him, and Kakashi eased to a halt. The artificial lights signalling a town glowed through the branches, and Itachi signed a question. Kakashi shook his head once, motioning to the west with his free hand, and Itachi nodded, slinking through the undergrowth. The night faded into the golden tones of sunlight, but the forest continued unbroken around them.

Kakashi pulled up short when Itachi paused, his head tilted in concentration. Shinobi, Itachi signed. Number unknown.

Hold, Kakashi signed. He skirted Itachi's position, prowling around a copse of trees, and heard the nearly silent exhale of the sentry on the far side. He froze, but the sentry's even breathing never changed, chakra dormant and unalarmed. Carefully, Kakashi leaned around and signalled Itachi forward.

Painstakingly, with slow, smooth movements, Itachi ghosted past him, moving a little further before halting in the cover of a large bush dripping leafy branches laden with berries. Kakashi waited for his signal before continuing forward.

They left the camp behind without alerting its occupants as to their presence, and an hour later, a second in the same fashion. After that, Konoha's shinobi presence faded abruptly, as though the intensifying damage to the woods itself had sapped its strength.

Kakashi tasted the faintest hint of dried blood, diffuse and directionless as if absorbed by the air around them, and where he tread soft ash stirred beneath his feet. Oaks and maples sprawled uprooted alongside massive pitted craters. The trees bore burns streaking black across their trucks, leafless branches drooping forlorn and brittle into dirt mixed with ash. Light glinted off half-buried kunai and shuriken abandoned once thrown, and blood and brain matter smeared the odd flat surface. The air was choked with the memory of smoke, acrid and stifling.

An uncharacteristic break in the forest ahead of them let streams of morning sunlight into the shaded forest floor. When Kakashi reached the edge he stopped, listening for any rustle in the eerie silence even as he absorbed the sight. Itachi slipped up to his side, just as silent, just as solemn.

A wide slash carved its way through the trees, as tall as three of Kakashi at its deepest and the far side some two hundred meters away, and the earth it disrupted was scorched black and desolate. Not a single thing, not a tree or an animal or even a stone had survived its path, burned to cinders or immolated alive or melted to slag. The trail of destruction stretched far past what Kakashi could see on either side of him, disappearing into the distance, a deep wound scored into the land. Kakashi knew of one thing that could inflict this level of destruction.

Kakashi wondered what this empty carnage would look like if a town had happened to be in its path.

"Kumo deployed a jinchuuriki," Itachi said, breaking the silence at last.

"Aa," Kakashi agreed, sober. He slid a sideways glance at Itachi. Konoha didn't have a jinchuuriki, or a Mangekyou to counter a Bijuudama. He cast a quick look over the burned land, but the battle had long since ended and neither side had claimed this region. "Let's keep going. We don't have a lot of ground left to cover today."

The town called Takehara sat on the northernmost edge of Yu, just shy of the border, and sprawled out over fifteen square kilometers. Trade trickled in from Shimo and Tetsu under both shinobi and samurai guard, and for that reason, the city was generally considered neutral ground, and held to neutrality more than the rest of the country. Even so, a town this size had enough people, enough ambient chakra, to disguise even a mid-range ninjutsu battle as long as is participants limited its environmental damage.

"Coming in?" Kakashi asked, as he bundled his cloak into his back with the rest of his Anbu gear. The back of his neck prickled at the idea of entering a town known to be crawling with enemy shinobi in civilian clothes after practically living in his armor, in a warzone, for a year.

"No," Itachi decided, reaching out to take Kakashi's sheathed katana. "I may observe patterns of movement from approaching or departing teams that will be useful for navigating the return trip."

Kakashi nodded. "Same signals," he said, flattening his hair under a fresh bandana. "Send a crow, if you need me."

Without Itachi, Kakashi slipped into the town with a paper-thin henge to shade his skin and hair and a cough mask over his mouth and nose. "It's allergies," he told the proprietor of a sunglasses street stall apologetically. "I'm allergic to everything, my wife is so crushed I can never bring home flowers."

The aging woman clucked sympathetically. "Poor dear. What's she like? Pretty?"

"Very," Kakashi said. "Graceful and confident in everything. Hair's always long and soft and - in a ponytail, and those eyes are...really something." He crinkled his own visible eye in a smile. "I want to make sure they're protected. I thought I could get us matching ones."

"You're such a sweetheart," said the shopkeeper, watching him pick up a pair of shades and try them on. "But whatever happened to your eye?"

"Accident with a kitchen knife when I was a kid," explained Kakashi.

She nodded at his arm. "And that?"

"Horse got away from me when I was hooking her up to the plow."

The woman frowned, shaking her head despairingly. "Bit of a klutz, are we, dear?"

"I'm a bit of a fixer-upper," Kakashi agreed cheerfully, shrugging his good shoulder. He tapped his sunglasses and held up a second pair. "How much for these?"

Kakashi credited his ability to wander through Takehara wearing sunglasses, a cough mask, and a tattered bandana without immediately being identified as a shinobi and attacked to the fact that Takehara's villagers were simply much weirder than him.

A woman wearing goggles with her hair in two long tails down her back strode past, her puffy sleeves overshadowed by the strings of flowers around her neck and bright yellow geta on her feet. An elderly man shuffled past in a puffy feathered vest that had been a particularly vivid lime green before years and washings had faded it nearly white and a hat with a veil lining the edges of a brim so wide it bumped into the walls and other passersby as he went.

Others had just one quirk that might give the average person cause for a double-take. One man wore cloth draped loosely around the lower half of his face, tied at the back of his head; another wore a mesh shirt with bright blue rhinestones over sensible trousers. Kakashi passed three different women wearing sunglasses and a soft cap with a rounded crown and a stiff peak projecting in front over their eyes. Two children wandered past hand in hand, perfectly normal but for the headgear that encircled their heads and shielded their faces with a dark, plasticky screen.

Takehara was simply too strange to reliably pick out an undercover shinobi unless they did something obviously shinobi-like, like pull out a katana or walk on walls or activate a doujutsu in the middle of the square. Even touched with the forecast of war, the town - closer to a city - continued determinedly along its merry, eccentric way. Lights illuminated stores from the inside, their doors thrown wide to entice those walking past, and voices and laughter jostled in the air. Kakashi sifted through the crowded streets, sliding between a man prodding his oxen down the road and a trio of women with their heads drawn together despite their conversation dissolving into incoherent shrieks.

In the eastern side of the city, Kakashi circled towards an inn built with sandy, reddish stone, rising above its two-and three-story neighbors at a respectable six floors. The bottom floor housed a coffee shop, a bar, and a small grocer besides the inn lobby, and Kakashi lingered in the grocer. Under the store owner's suspicious eye, he picked out a somewhat battered package of biscuits from Kaze no Kuni. Nobody bought biscuits from Kaze unless they were nostalgic, planning a prank, or needed an overpriced, makeshift paperweight, but he paid an even hundred ryou for the package anyways. "You have a very wide selection," Kakashi informed the owner.

The man grunted and squinted suspiciously at the bills in his hand, holding them up to the light.

"Thanks," Kakashi said, raising the biscuits in a lazy wave, and strode over to the inn lobby.

A young woman with a round helmet pulled down low over her eyes beamed at him from the front desk. "Good morning!" she chirped. "How can I help you today?"

"I'd like a room for a night," Kakashi said. "Sunrise side of the building, if you don't mind."

"Excellent choice, customer-san!" she said, flipping a page in her record book. "Room Seven-three-seven on the sixth floor is open, and it'll be fifteen hundred ryou for the night. Will that work for you?"

"Sure," agreed Kakashi, reaching for his wallet. "Oh, and another thing." He set the bills on the counter, the package of biscuits beside it, and finally the bottle of umeshu from Yu-Zaou. "I'm an old friend of Benjiro. Could you pass those along to him? Tell him it's from Chikafusa."

"Oh, you know the manager! I'll leave them for him in the back," she said brightly. "Enjoy your stay, customer-san."

Fifteen hundred ryou bought a night in a nice, single room with a table and two chairs, a wardrobe, and a bed. The window, flecked with dirt, overlooked the eastern markets. Kakashi dropped his pack on the table, checking the room over quickly, and set a simple alarm with an open pouch of coins balanced on the doorknob before deeming it safe to take a seat on the bed. It dipped under his weight, soft and giving, and he lay back experimentally. It swallowed him entirely. He sprawled there for a moment, resigned, before rolling over with great effort.

He dragged the blankets onto the floor instead, settling on top of them and pulling down a pillow for good measure. Now, his mission was to wait.

He dozed lightly, but his eye opened of its own accord when the light outside faded to the orange-golden tones of evening, Obito's eye staying closed out of habit. Kakashi frowned, his hand sliding to his holster instinctively as he sat up. The room was empty, undisturbed, and when he padded over to the door, the coin pouch on the doorknob sat exactly where he had placed it. He picked it up, letting the coins jingle in his hand absently as he eyed the door.

No intruders. No visitors. More importantly, no deliveries.

Kakashi glanced out the window. The clamor from the dinner crowds drifted up, cheerful and frenetic and as colorful as they themselves were. He bundled up the bedding one handed and tossed it back up onto the bed, then unstrapped his holster and dropped it next to his pack. After a moment's consideration, he put his sunglasses back on.

He took a seat at the table and waited.

As dusk approached, a floorboard outside creaked, brushing just at the edge of his hearing range. Kakashi froze.

He tugged the strap on his sling over his head, pulling it off and tossing it to the table. He turned towards the door, drawing a single kunai from the holster on the table and flipping it up into his hand as he crossed the room on silent feet. He paused just behind the door with one hand on the knob as he waited for a telltale shift.

Cloth rustled over skin. Kakashi whipped open the door, grabbing the man outside and slamming him against the doorframe with the tip of his kunai angled up under the other shinobi's sternum.

Kakashi had just enough time to register the man's eyes, pale green and wide with shock below his Konohan hitai-ate, before the man's teammate set his katana to Kakashi's throat, pressing lightly with just a hint of the edge in a clear warning.

Kakashi grimaced. He released his hostage and raised his hands slowly, taking a step backwards as the shinobi he'd pinned eeled behind his teammate, joining a third shinobi and a kunoichi looming behind the kenjutsu wielder. Kakashi let the kunai drop from his splayed fingers with a clatter, hyper-aware of the touch of cold steel pressed to the underside of his chin.

"Back," ordered the shinobi, and Kakashi eased backwards slowly as the man advanced, past the table with his pack and holster until he'd backed himself to the far wall of the room. "Get on your knees."

Kakashi frowned, his eye flicking down to the blade at his throat until the man lifted it away slightly. "On your knees," the shinobi repeated, and gingerly, Kakashi knelt. The katana returned to his throat.

His teammates spilled into the room after him, the threat evident in their unsheathed blades. The last shut the door behind her, twirling her kunai into a backhanded grip and fixing Kakashi with a cold stare. A shinobi with a scar running from the edge of his eye down to his jaw moved deliberately between Kakashi and the window, glancing out briefly before returning his attention to the room.

Live capture for an interrogation. Kakashi looked the team over. All four wore the standard blues under their flak jackets, but intercepting a suspected intelligence operative wasn't a mission that would be assigned to a Guntai team or a majority genin team. He inhaled discreetly, sifting through the scent of dried blood and the sticky-burn of metal oil, and caught the slightest sickly-sweet tang of poison from the wire shinobi.

For an on-site interrogation in a foreign environment during wartime, even in one's own secured territory, there would be a full sentry team to negate disturbances and serve as a second net should the prisoner manage to escape. "You're from Konoha," Kakashi stalled, his eyes skittering over all four to the closed window. He let his hands drift downwards, but the katana wielder gave the blade a warning twitch and Kakashi raised them again obligingly.

"Did the hitai-ate give us away?" drawled the kunoichi.

"You could have just knocked," Kakashi said dryly, and tipped his head further back when the shinobi pressed the edge of his katana in harder in warning.

"Jokes won't help you here," snapped the scarred shinobi. "Who do you answer to?"

"The gods?" Kakashi tried.

The kunoichi's teammate drew back his sword in time for her to strike Kakashi across the face, snapping his head to the side and sending his sunglasses clattering across the floor. He caught himself on both hands, sending little spikes of pain shooting through his mostly healed arm. He let his head drop low, his hair hanging over his eyes as if stunned by the blow, and snuck a quick glance that showed no recognition on the faces of his captors, even with his scarred eyelid revealed.

"We know you're a rebel spy," Kakashi's former prisoner said, low and dangerous. "Don't play dumb." He slipped a coil of wire out of his back pouch, unwinding it as he spoke.

Kakashi worked his jaw discreetly, feeling for bruising or fractures. "What happened to the operative stationed here?"

The kunoichi scoffed. "The usual. He gave you up pretty quick."

Lie. This team came prepared to bag a spy, not a combat jounin carrying reactivation orders. Captured, though, and probably to be killed once they finished with Kakashi. "You've brought your entire team just to grab me," he said idly. "And...a second team as backup securing the perimeter. Don't you think that's overkill? Are you trying to catch my reinforcements, too?"

"You're here by yourself," the scarred shinobi said, tapping his kunai against the windowsill. "No one's coming for you. You won't leave this room alive unless you give us what we want."

"That's not entirely true," Kakashi said, ignoring the way the entire team stiffened. "But I don't need him to rescue me from you. I just needed you to confirm your numbers." He opened his left eye, and the world sharpened and saturated and slowed all at once. "You should be more careful next time."

The kenjutsu specialist lunged, but Kakashi saw the path of his attack and pounced, coming up inside the man's guard. He turned with the other shinobi, seizing the hilt of his katana with his good hand and striking him in the chest with the pommel in the same movement. The other man flew backwards, narrowly missing his kunoichi teammate as she crouched, chakra burbling as she formed handseals, and crashed into the table, which splintered and collapsed under him. He didn't get up.

Scarred shinobi - wire and shuriken. Green-eyed ex-hostage - two kunai. Kakashi went for the biggest threat and whirled, hurling his captured katana at the kunoichi.

"Shit!" she spat, jerking back, but the blade skewered her through the shoulder and pinned her to the floor. She hit with a thud, her chakra losing its form, and cracked her head against the ground.

Kakashi was already moving, vaulting over her to meet the green-eyed shinobi. The shinobi hurled a kunai directly at his face in a panic with a soundless yelp, and Kakashi snatched it out of the air, using it to parry the second in the man's hand. The other shinobi struck again, desperately, but Kakashi ducked easily, slamming the ring of the kunai into his arm just below his wrist. The bone broke with a loud crack, and Kakashi took the opening to kick him into the wall. His cry cut off sharply as he hit and collapsed to the base of the wall.

Kakashi closed Obito's Sharingan as he turned and the drain on his chakra abated abruptly. A shuriken sliced through the air on either side of him, the attached wires glinting in the fading light, and he leapt straight up onto the ceiling before they could encircle him. He sent his kunai hurtling at the scarred shinobi as the other man released the wires in favor of his own kunai.

Kakashi dodged one kunai, leaned around a second, and flipped down off the ceiling practically on top of the other shinobi. He ignored the bared teeth and the reflexive punch as the man's snarl distorted the scar on his face, and snapped a hand out. He caught the man by the throat and dragged him backwards for two long paces as he gagged and clawed at Kakashi's hand, slamming the back of the shinobi's head into the wall and dropping him when his muscles went slack.

The sudden stillness gave Kakashi pause. Outside, electric streetlights flickered on one by one, spilling faint yellow light in through the window. He stood motionless for a long moment, waiting to see if any of the shinobi were less unconscious than they appeared to be, or if the perimeter team would try a second ambush, but the seconds ticked past with nothing to break the silence.

Kakashi let himself relax. He surveyed the destruction, dusting his hands off absently. He sifted through the remnants of the table for his sling, rolling the unconscious shinobi out of the way. His arm was starting to ache again. Then he hogtied his would-be assailants with ninja wire, went through their pockets and holsters and equipment pouches, and robbed them blind of money and weapons alike, because Hanabi-ha was always short on resources.

Four standard sets of kunai and shuriken, two coils of wire, a katana maintenance kit, three of the standard weapons maintenance kits, and five thousand ryou. He squirreled his haul away in his pack, knocked askew but intact, and sat back on his heels to strap on his holster and weapons pouch. He couldn't stay, not with the grab team here and the room in ruins.

One team outside, though - that was the intel he'd needed.

"Thanks," he said to the incapacitated team, sling cradeling his barely-not-completely-healed arm, and shut the door behind him on his way out.

The hallway was empty. Kakashi darted down the stairs to the second floor and took the expedited exit through the window at the end of the hallway. He dropped down unnoticed in the alley between the coffee shop and a neighboring restaurant, landing in a crouch.

He stretched his senses out, weathering the rank stench drifting from the dumpsters on either side of him, but he could hear or smell nothing out of the ordinary. He stood slowly, slipping out into the dinner crowds, and took a loop of the inn's perimeter. The sentry team should have been posted in the building lobby or in the nearby streets, but though Kakashi made no attempt to hide his holster or the way he checked over his shoulder every five steps, no one took the bait.

He frowned, wandering around to the front doors again to peer into the lobby, but saw only a young couple talking to the receptionist as their three children climbed over the armchairs in the waiting area. He inhaled and caught the faint scent of the grab team - relatively fresh, less than an hour old. He backtracked, but following a scent in a high-traffic area was difficult even when he had his hounds' eight extra noses.

"Caw."

Kakashi glanced up. A crow perched on the roof of the next building, a barely-visible silhouette against the night sky. It cocked its head to the side and repeated, "Caw."

Ah.

Kakashi took one long step into the alley and leapt straight up, landing on the edge of the roof. Itachi's familiar chakra brushed against him as he landed, and Itachi himself stood next to the neatly piled bodies of four Konoha nin a couple meters away, wiping a streak of blood from his eye absently.

"I see you found the perimeter team," Kakashi observed.

"Taichou," Itachi greeted. "I followed this team in from the outskirts of the city and realized their objective when I saw you in the window. I assume your operative was compromised."

"Yes," Kakashi agreed, rubbing a hand over his mask. Itachi handed him his katana, and he shrugged into the harness.

Itachi watched him with a strange mixture of curiosity and resignation. "Will we proceed to the operative's replacement?"

Kakashi shook his head. "The reactivation order for this sector can wait. I don't leave a man behind," he said. "We rescue him or we confirm his death."

Itachi merely nodded. He knew firsthand Kakashi's mode of operation. "I can summon my flock as eyes," he said. "However, their tracking capabilities are limited without knowledge of what their targets look like."

"The operative is Kodate Masoto, chuunin, twenty-five years old with a medium build. No identifying marks on his face. Dark brown hair, dark grey eyes," said Kakashi, quashing the uneasiness that rose at the back of his mind. "He should have been inactivated for the past ten months. Given that the grab team and the backup team were both in place within eight hours and that the teams knew the signal but not the countersignal, either his capture must have been recent, his interrogators have only recently begun to break him, or he was prematurely killed. "

"If either of the first apply, he must be held nearby," Itachi concluded. "The backup team approached from outside the town, but they were not packed for travel. Their base camp is in Takehara or in the surrounding forest."

Kakashi eyed the unconscious backup team. "Will they be getting up anytime soon?"

Itachi appeared faintly abashed. "I attempted a relatively benign Mangekyou genjutsu on them," he explained, his tone perfectly even. "I wished to see if a recovery would be possible without medical intervention."

The backup team did not seem anywhere near recovery.

"You don't know," Kakashi summarized with a sinking feeling.

"No," Itachi agreed with a slight frown.

For lack of better options, Kakashi chose to move on to the mission. "I'll take point," he said. "Sweep for anything I flush out." He dropped back down to the street as Itachi's flock materialized behind him in a flurry of chakra and feathers.

Difficult didn't mean impossible, and the trail was still relatively fresh. Kakashi wove patiently across the street in front of the hotel lobby, chakra bolstering his nose, before he picked up the scent of the scarred shinobi, and from there, those of his teammates. He slipped between a slow-moving couple with their heads bent together and a small pack of teenagers, his concentration entirely on the faint hints of metal and Konohan oaks and woodsmoke. He kept very little attention on the rest of his surroundings, save what was directly in front of him; he trusted Itachi to guard his back.

The grab team had not bothered to detour on their route. Their trail led Kakashi unerringly into the progressively seedier southwest corner of the town, and though he lost the scent on three separate occasions, he picked it up each time less than a dozen meters ahead in the same direction. A dark skinned woman flitted at the edge of his vision for a few paces, sharp eyes wary and her grace a little too easy to be anything but a kunoichi. Kakashi marked her and then ignored her. Itachi would take care of any problems that arose, and that was a Kumo nin if he ever saw one - he doubted she would attack without provocation in a city under an uneasy ceasefire.

Dark shapes winged above him, chirping and rattling back and forth between themselves. The burn-bite of alcohol and the sharp-sour taint of vomit and the heavy-hot reek of sex crowded in on him, and he paused to equilibriate himself, sifting for the breadcrumbs of the team's scents. Like the faintest stars in a moonless sky, he followed the trail between a pair of brothels, looping around a bar to an entire street of brothels.

Fluorescent lights danced over crude signs and the slight figures that lingered in the doorways and the shadows, watching him with hungry eyes and bared skin. One or two may have called out to him, but Kakashi registered only background noise, as inconsequential as the wind. A harsh chorus of caws broke out above him as he turned the corner, the neon signs leaving white spots in his vision as he entered the unlit alley, and would have walked straight into the kunai if Itachi hadn't been there to grab the shinobi from behind.

"Hm," said Kakashi, blinking, and caught the kunai that dropped from a nerveless hand as Itachi quietly choked the shinobi into unconsciousness with an arm pressed against his throat.

"You seemed rather too distracted to notice either my or the crows' signals," Itachi said neutrally.

An accurate assessment. "Do you have an exact location?" Kakashi asked.

"Kombu identified a second guard on the far side of this building, but no other visible guards," Itachi answered, inclining his head to the right. "I will move to neutralize her before you enter."

"On your mark," Kakashi agreed. "Do you have eyes inside? Building layout?"

"No eyes inside," Itachi answered. A crow croaked above him. "Three stories; judging from the exterior, between four and six rooms per floor, maximum of two windows per room, curtains drawn. Lights on in two windows on the first floor, three on the second, and two on the third. Possible basement level as well."

Kakashi considered. "I'll make a stealth entry from the bottom floor, clear the basement first if there is one. You come in from the top and work your way down to meet me."

"Hai," said Itachi. "I will send Kombu to you once the sentry has been neutralized." He vanished in a flash of shadows, crimson winking to life in his eyes.

Kakashi padded around the corner to one of the darkened windows. He didn't have time for his armor, but he pulled off his sling and cough mask, bundling them into his pack and replacing them with his Anbu mask and letting his henge dissolve. He waited.

A small, dark shape swooped down on him, hovering silently at his shoulder before flapping laboriously skyward. Kakashi jimmied the window latch with a kunai, prying it open and slipping inside. Rather than sex and booze, metal and oil and the faint tang of blood flooded the air. He closed the window behind him, shutting himself into a cramped room with armchairs and a tiny couch pushed against the wall to free up pace. Scuffs and cuts marked the floor, scarred by training but the air in the room weighed stagnant and undisturbed, and Kakashi eased towards the door. He didn't draw his sword - the katana was too long for these close quarters, and though he had his kunai, it had a reach short enough that he may as well go hand to hand. He missed his tanto fiercely, but wishes wouldn't help him here.

The door swung open on greased hinges, and Kakashi slipped down the hallway to the next room, following the people-scent and the yellow lights that spilled out from under the door. He drew to a stop just outside.

Kakashi inhaled carefully. Two people, neither of them Masoto, both carrying the faintest hint of the same metal-oil combination that clung to most shinobi, with a familiar tint reminiscent of the woods surrounding Konoha. Voices drifted out, one deep and rumbling, the other a gentle tenor.

Kakashi opened the door and sprang. Both shinobi whirled and went for their holsters, and the taller dropped the mug he was holding, but Kakashi was on them before they could manage more than a shocked inhale. He slammed an open palm into the solar plexus of the taller, struck the other precisely in the pressure point above the collar of his flak jacket, and spun to catch the fallen mug before finishing off his first victim with an uppercut to the chin. He grabbed the man's collar as he collapsed, caught the other with a leg under his back and lowered them to the ground noiselessly.

He turned, probing the room with a keen eye. Empty dishes and mugs scattered the table, a pitcher of water and a large glass pot of tea on one side. Three crates stacked in the corner held sacks of rice and packages of dried meat. Chairs clustered in twos and threes, throwing angular shadows from the overhead light. Kakashi set the mug down on the nearest chair and retreated to the door.

A room containing two long tables pushed together, ringed by chairs, was empty. A small restroom was empty. A coat closet was empty. Kakashi cleared them in less than a minute and bypassed the staircase in favor of the kitchen. Pungent chemical cleaners warred with composting waste, and faintly, raw meat, but Kakashi tasted the metallic tang of fresh blood underneath. He padded closer to the open doorway, keeping to the wall, alert for any sound of movement within.

Kakashi stiffened as a spike of chakra from upstairs cut off abruptly with a quiet thump. The element of surprise gone, he let Obito's Sharingan blaze and hurled himself around through the doorway as the world sharpened with startling definition. He skidded into the empty kitchen. Overhead lights - wooden cabinets - dining table - pantry. He crossed the kitchen in a heartbeat and yanked the door open, springing down the stairs and landing in a crouch at the bottom. He had just enough time for the scene to burn irrevocably into his memory - the blades and senbon lined up neatly on the table, the bloodied figure slumped on his knees with his wrists strung up with wire, the startled kunoichi's blade already in motion - before the kunai completed its arc and slashed a crimson smile through Masoto's throat.

Kakashi's hand filled with lightning before he could consciously think of it, and the shrieking chorus preceded the chidori that ripped through bone and beating heart and out the kunoichi's back as she choked. He yanked his arm out as he let the jutsu die, whirling frantically to Masoto with green chakra sparking at his fingertips.

But iryou-ninjutsu had never been Kakashi's strength despite what he'd learned from Rin, despite the ability he'd been gifted from Obito, and Masoto's blood sprayed through his fingers as he clamped his hands over the mortal wound. The kunoichi had severed an artery and two veins, and nicked one more, and Kakashi patched the edges together desperately, sloppily, but Masoto was losing too much blood and Kakashi couldn't start an infusion because he needed both hands to stop the bleeding -

"Ka...kashi," Masoto rasped, his breath bubbling and rattling in his throat.

"I'm here," said Kakashi, but even as the words left his mouth Masoto's fluttering pulse stuttered to a stop.

Kakashi snarled silently, switching from iryou-chakra to lightning and shoving a jolt of energy straight into Masoto's heart. His limbs jerked and flailed, his body shuddering from the electricity, but his heart didn't beat. A second, stronger jolt. Kakashi paused with his breath caught in his throat, but Masoto stayed still and silent. The third left a patch of scorched skin, an acrid taste of singed hair in the air. Kakashi let his chakra crackle away, taking his anger and desperation and leaving him empty.

Dead.

Kakashi sat back on his heels and examined his hands clinically. Chidori was always intended to kill up close and messy, never a 'clean' jutsu, but he had both Masoto's blood on his hands and his killer's, drenched to his forearms and dripping onto his pants and soaking into the knees where the blood pooled on the floor.

He sensed more than heard someone at the top of the stairs, and turned to see Itachi's crimson eyes flick around the room, on the kunoichi's corpse, on Masoto hanging by the wires, on the blood splattered and spilled, before landing on him. Wordlessly, he descended until he was standing at Kakashi's shoulder. "You knew him," Itachi said, matter-of-fact.

"We began at the Academy at the same time," Kakashi said, his own voice coming out entirely devoid of emotion. "I worked with him several times over the years." He stood, taking a knife from the table of torture implements to slice through the wires binding Masoto's wrists. "He was a good shinobi." He caught Masoto's body as it slumped and lowered it to the floor. "Do you have a sealing scroll? I need to wash up."

Kakashi's civvies were well and truly ruined. He stripped out of the bloodsoaked clothes, rinsing as much of the blood off as he could in the kitchen sink and switching back to Anbu blacks and amor. He flipped his hitai-ate over in his hands before tying it on, then fitting his mask over his face.

When he returned to the basement pantry, Masoto's body was gone and Itachi held a scroll neatly edged in black in one hand. He hadn't touched the kunoichi Kakashi had killed, and Kakashi paused to look into her empty eyes long enough to feel regret surface amidst his anger. He turned away. "Light it up," he told Itachi brusquely.

"Kakashi-taichou - "

Kakashi bared his teeth in a silent snarl beneath his mask. "The shinobi you knocked out. Did you use genjutsu?"

"No," said Itachi, the frown evident in his voice.

"Then everyone upstairs has a fighting chance before this place burns to the ground. Light it up, Itachi," Kakashi repeated. "This is a message that needs to be sent."

Orders or no, Itachi wouldn't obey him if he thought it would compromise them. Itachi examined him with an unwavering stare. Slowly, his hands formed seals one by one. "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu," he murmured, and with a muted roar the katon set the room alight.

Kakashi let his eyelid drift closed over Obito's Sharingan as he turned towards the stairs. "Let's go," he said.

Itachi silently handed him the scroll with Masoto's body as they exited by the roof, and he slipped it into his back pouch before leading them towards the nearest edge of the town.

The Kumo kunoichi made a reappearance, this time in full uniform, slinking along the streets behind them for a few blocks as they neared the outskirts of Takehara. Kakashi paused, tilting his mask down at her long enough to warn her that she'd been spotted before leaping to the next roof. After a moment, her chakra pulsed, and she darted forward and upward in a sudden blur to intercept them.

Kakashi gritted his teeth, landing lightly and straightening to his full height as Itachi did the same at his shoulder, angled to cover their backs.

"Sorry for the inconvenience," the kunoichi said, strolling forward to meet them with her hands in her pants pockets. The red-and-white woven hilt of her katana protruding over one shoulder was well worn and well cared for. "But that was a Konoha satellite camp you just raided."

Kakashi made a show of looking her Kumo-style armor and hitai-ate up and down. "That a problem for you?"

"I hope you didn't do anything to implicate Kumo in there," she said rocking onto her toes and then back on her heels, "or we might have a problem."

"Don't worry," said Kakashi, checking over her shoulder for backup. "If Konoha sends a team to investigate, they'll know exactly who did it."

"And who might that be?"

Kakashi lifted his porcelain mask, shaking his hair free though he kept the Sharingan closed. "Kakashi. And a helpful shadow," he added, glancing at Itachi.

The kunoichi's eyes widened. "Hatake?"

"Kakashi," he repeated. "And you are?"

"Serui," she answered absently, eyes narrowed as she scrutinized him. "What's Kage-Killer Kakashi doing in a contested border town like Takehara?"

Kajino Serui was a name Kakashi recognized from a report back when he was an Anbu captain, regarding a particularly brutal three-way free-for-all on the border of Ame and Kusa that left a body count of eighteen. The sole Konoha shinobi who survived described a kunoichi who summoned a storm on the ground itself, white lightning shooting through white clouds - White-Storms Serui, her Bingo Book entry named her. "What's Shiroiarashi Serui doing in a low-stakes border town like Takehara?" Kakashi shot back. "Aren't you afraid we'll tell someone you don't want knowing that there are Kumo combat jounin lurking here?"

Serui smiled, clear amusement dancing in her eyes. "I think you've made it clear you're not on their side," she said, nodding towards the smoke now starting to twine into the night sky. "Thought about joining the other side? You've got the lightning affinity to match."

"We're just here to retrieve one of our own," Kakashi said neutrally.

Serui glanced again at the burning building, longer this time. "My condolences," she said.

"Our fight isn't with you, but we're not looking to join a side right now," said Kakashi.

Serui shrugged elegantly. "The offer stands now, but not forever," she warned. "Kumogakure would welcome Copy-Nin Kakashi more than Konoha ever did."

Takehara was hot, too hot, especially now that Kakashi and Itachi had set one of Konoha's bases on fire and they knew that Kumo had an operation planned; reactivation of their own intelligence operatives in the area could wait until the turmoil died down. They turned south instead, heading for the border with Hi, and the next time they made camp, evening had begun to creep up on the afternoon.

Kakashi set up the perimeter seals and a small fire and took Masoto's scroll from its pouch while Itachi went to find more wood for the fire. He turned it over in his hands absently, carefully.

For all that he had enrolled at the same time as Kodate Masoto, Kakashi had spent only a year in the Academy, and even during his time there, he'd gravitated towards the other clan brats or the kids of prominent Shirei-bu shinobi by force of familiarity. Masoto had been neither, and he hadn't made the cut to Command after his graduation, so though they'd crossed paths on missions and in the village on occasion, Kakashi never had much cause to talk to him. Kakashi carried the man's body with him but didn't really know him, and he wondered if the guilt weighed that much more heavily on him for it.

Itachi returned with an armful of wood, which he set at the camp's edge. He tossed a piece on the fire and turned to Kakashi expectantly. "Negative emotions feed the Mangekyou," he said, and it would have been callous but Kakashi suspected it was Itachi's way of trying to distract him.

Kakashi tapped the end of Masoto's scroll lightly and slipped it back into the pouch. "What's first, Itachi-sensei?"

Silence.

Kakashi looked up warily, chakra surging under his skin, but there was no threat. Just Itachi, staring at him blankly. Kakashi checked over his shoulder. Still nothing. "Itachi?"

Itachi blinked. "Activate your Mangekyou, Kakashi-taichou," he said, as if nothing had happened. "Each holds power unique to its wielder, and we must determine what yours grants."

Kakashi checked with his chakra to make sure one or both of them weren't under a genjutsu, then opened his left eye. Before the initial burn had a chance to abate he gritted out, "Mangekyou," and the world gained an extra dimension as agony stabbed into his eye. When he glanced up again Itachi was watching him, the triple bladed pinwheels in his own eyes revolving languidly.

Itachi broke eye contact to reach to the side and pick up a piece of firewood from the pile. Kakashi tracked his movement in future- and present-time, superimposed on themselves in spectral form. "Concentrate on this," he said, and set the wood down between them.

Kakashi stared at it, pooling more chakra to the Mangekyou that sucked it in greedily. When he blinked, the impression burned itself into the inside of his eyelid.

"You want something to happen to it," Itachi continued, his voice quiet but steady in the background. "Your chakra is formless until it reaches your eye, but the Mangekyou knows the shape it should take; let it happen."

Kakashi's vision was starting to blur, from keeping his eye open so long or the future-present overlaid sight or the dizzying amount of chakra the Mangekyou devoured - but then he realized it wasn't his sight wavering at the edges, it was reality. The air rippled, gaining strength like a wave crashing down towards the shore as reality itself twisted into a spiral with the piece of wood at its epicenter.

"Give it a name," Itachi said, low but urgent. "Give it an identity and it will be easier to call up the second time."

Itachi's techniques were named for gods, Susano'o of the storms and Tsukiyomi of the moon, and Obito's deserved a label no less potent. "Kamui," he said aloud. Authority of the gods.

With a rush of electric-charged energy the wood blinked out of existence.

Kakashi reeled at the suddenness, absently noting the slick, scalding trail sliding down his face. He blinked and his Mangekyou spun apart into its three tomoe. Kakashi's hand rose of its own accord to his eye as he squeezed it shut, the white-hot burn searing into his nerve endings. He glanced to either side, but didn't see where his firewood target had gone. He looked up at Itachi with his one regular eye. "Long distance kawarimi?" he suggested dubiously. That was an awfully elementary ability for a legendary doujutsu.

Itachi deactivated his own Mangekyou, a slight frown crinkling his forehead as he scrutinized the rest of the clearing. "I did not see where it reappeared." He turned back to Kakashi thoughtfully. "Perhaps another trial," he suggested.

Kakashi wiped at Obito's eye, and his fingers came away bloody. "One more," he agreed, and braced for the piercing pain again. "Mangekyou." He blinked away crimson tears, taking a bare second to let the world orient itself in his sight before turning his eyes on a small branch on a tree about five meters away. He let his chakra surge, and it came more readily than it had the first time around as he growled, "Kamui!"

The tree two over from the one Kakashi had been aiming for warped abruptly. Kakashi gritted his teeth, dragging his gaze further right as the twisting fabric of space ripped apart, and the whorl caught the middle tree in its focus. The burn in his eye grew nearly unbearable as he shoved a final burst of chakra into the jutsu.

Reality snapped back. The world righted itself, minus a section of the tree trunk in the middle a meter long, and the top half of the tree crashed down with the sudden absence of its support. Kakashi leapt backwards as he closed the Mangekyou and let it smoulder away, clamping his hand over it ineffectually as though he could squeeze away the pain. Itachi leaned over to give the tree a light shove as it crashed down, and its reaching branches narrowly missed the campfire.

They looked at each other. "I suggest we debrief later and leave the vicinity immediately," said Itachi, and smothered the fire with a tiny suiton.

"I agree," said Kakashi, tearing down the perimeter seal on the tree trunk above his head and lunging for his katana and travel pack.

Camping unobtrusively in hostile territory was one thing; bringing down trees with uncontrolled jutsu was another, and Kakashi's chakra stores was drained enough from two tries at Kamui that a Guntai chuunin team would have a sporting chance at knocking him off.

Kamui, he thought, as he and Itachi darted into the familiar shadows of the forest. A mystery, a weapon, and possibly, a trump card. Obito would have loved it.

Kakashi had expected the border of Yu and Hi to be heavily patrolled, particularly where the border with Shimo drew closest, but given that it was the quickest way into Fire Country, he'd been willing to give it a shot. Crouched behind a crooked hickory tree about three breaths too close to discovery, Kakashi tipped his mask towards Itachi and signed, Numbers?

Itachi leaned around the side carefully, eyes tracking the movement in the next copse. Three squads, he signalled, his hands barely visible in the moonlight. Two four-man teams each. He tilted his chin forward in a silent question.

Kakashi shook his head. Too heavily guarded. He flicked two fingers towards the southeast. Eighty klicks. They would make their incursion further down the border.

The Konohan camps grew sparser the further from the Shimo border they travelled. When they chose a clearing for their own camp, dawn had broken, and they had not seen another team for two hours. One hour ago, the ground had begun tilting loopily beneath Kakashi's feet, and fifteen minutes ago, his vision had begun blurring for reasons not related to the Mangekyou except for chakra exhaustion from its overuse. Around the same time, Itachi started eyeing him like he needed to make sure Kakashi was still conscious and capable of movement.

"I'll do the west side perimeter sweep," Kakashi said, blinking his vision mostly clear. "Take the east, circle back and meet back here."

"Hai," Itachi agreed, giving him a last careful once-over before leaping up into the trees and springing lightly between the thin branches without so much as rustling the leaves.

Kakashi didn't think he had enough chakra for even that so he kept to the ground, weaving his way low through the undergrowth. The bushes were tall enough to cover him even if he were standing at his full height, though they were lighter and airier than the jungle tangle in the Forest of Death, and the air was damp under his fingertips. A small stream spilled over the rocks ahead of him, steam curling up off the water and clinging to the bindings of his sandals.

He almost didn't notice the extra scent trail, snaking atop his and Itachi's; their tail had been only a few minutes behind and gaining ground rapidly. He stood abruptly still, examining the scent barely indistinguishable from his own for a long moment. With a cursory glance towards his intended path, he broke off to follow the scent trail, quickening his steps to a jog as it looped back towards their camp and Itachi.

Kakashi doubled back over the stream, rounded the tree trunk, and came face to face with himself.

The other Kakashi blinked back, lazy and sharp and coiled all at once. Every detail of his double matched exactly - the faded Anbu blacks, the shade of the skin under the Fire tattoo, even the chakra signature - metal and forest and a taste of ozone. Silver hair peeking out from under a worn bandana flashed as the other Kakashi tilted his head, its sheen muted by hints of dyes.

Kakashi took a step. His doppelganger mirrored him. It took a second step, and as it took a third, it toppled forward slowly. It erupted with a soft puff as it hit the ground.

Shiba burst out of the smoke with an overjoyed bark, hurling himself straight into Kakashi's chest. His arms closed around the wriggling ninken automatically, hefting him in his arms as the dog knocked the porcelain mask askew and licked his face frantically. "Maa, settle down, you're supposed to be a shinobi," Kakashi admonished, leaning away to get his mouth out of the danger zone.

Shiba finally leapt off, paws digging into Kakashi's stomach as he pushed away, and capered on the ground madly instead, darting back and forth and back and forth as Kakashi watched before rearing up on his hind legs again to plant his front paws on Kakashi's thighs. Kakashi dropped a hand down to scratch his ninken's ears, and Shiba's yelps dissolved into a happy whine.

"Where's the rest of the pack?" Kakashi asked, giving Shiba one last pat and releasing him to tear circles around the clearing.

"Outskirts of Aoshima!" Shiba answered brightly. "C'mon, let's go, I'll take us there!"

"Whoa," said Kakashi mildly, snagging Shiba by the scruff as the hound whirled to bolt. "You're forgetting something. We need to wait for Itachi first." But even as he spoke, Kakashi heard the whisper of cloth over cloth, and Shiba's ears pricked.

"Silence-black-scorch!" Shiba wrenched out of Kakashi's lax grip and pounced at him. Itachi, who was shorter - far shorter - than Kakashi, ended up with a face full of Shiba's belly fur.

"He grew!" Shiba said gleefully, squirming atop Itachi's head. "Kakashi, tell him he grew!"

"Shiba says you're still a midget," Kakashi told his erstwhile kouhai, watching him prod tentatively at the ninken enthusiastically attempting to suffocate him.

"Ah," said Itachi, looking askance at the ninken as he peeled the hound off his head.

"You liar!" Shiba yipped, thrilled, dangling in Itachi's grip. Itachi set the ninken down, only for Shiba to jump up on him again and attempt to lick his face off entirely.

"Down, Shiba," Kakashi admonished.

Shiba's tail battered the air but he backed off obediently, his front paws pattering in place as he fairly beamed up at them with a doggy grin.

"You are unhurt," Itachi said to the ninken politely, which was about as warm a greeting as anyone who wasn't Sasuke could get from Itachi unprompted.

"I am unhurt!" Shiba agreed enthusiastically.

"The rest of my pack is near Aoshima. It's too far for me to summon them with the chakra I have left," Kakashi told Itachi, crouching to let Shiba wriggled up against his armor once again. He scuffed his hand through the fur on Shiba's head, let his fingers tangle in his long coat at his shoulder. "We can make it there before noon."

Itachi instantly frowned. "You have not fully recovered from your injuries and are nearing chakra exhaustion. You can barely walk; we will be more vulnerable to attack," he pointed out. "We will be able to make the journey more quickly once you have rested."

"I'll take a chakra pill. Once we join up with the rest of my ninken, we'll have eight additional options for guard duty," Kakashi said, bracing one knee against the ground so the faint tremor in his muscles wouldn't give him away. "Both of us will have the opportunity to rest, and we'll have more protection from attack."

Logic tended to work best in arguments against Itachi. He paused to calculate both options, his eyes on Kakashi the entire time. "Half a chakra pill," he concluded. "And you will resume wearing the sling."

"It's fine," Kakashi said reflexively, at the same time Shiba demanded, "A sling?"

"It was broken. Now it's not," Kakashi said for Shiba's benefit.

Shiba snapped at his arm, catching it between his teeth gently but firmly, and Kakashi failed to hide his wince from the twinge of pain. "Ah cou' tell y'did s'mth'n t' it!" he growled accusingly.

"I know I've told you about biting me before," Kakashi said mildly.

Shiba let go immediately, swiping his tongue over his teeth and hunching defensively. "Wear the sling thing, boss," he insisted. "It'll make the bone better, right?"

"No," said Kakashi.

"You may reinjure the arm if you continue to use it as you do normally," Itachi interjected, clearly picking up on the conversation though he could only understand half of it. Shiba pricked his ears triumphantly.

"Fine," said Kakashi as the world did another lazy loop around him. The better they got to Aoshima, the better, and if he stayed here any longer Itachi and Shiba would win the argument by default when he passed out. He fished his med pouch out clumsily and tossed it in Itachi's general direction so he could find the sling that he regretted not leaving to burn in Takehara. "Get me the chakra pill."

"Aa," said Itachi, pretending at obedience once again.

"Oh no," Shiba said suddenly, flattening his ears.

The strap of his sling halfway over his head, Kakashi paused. "Oh no?" he parroted, and Itachi glanced up sharply, eyes narrow.

Shiba shuffled his paws. "I forgot about Akino?'

Had Kakashi full range of his cognitive facilities, he would have realized how strange it was that Shiba had turned up by himself. Now, the faintest prickle of oh, yeah drifted through the fog over his mind and he said, resigned, "Where did you leave him?"

"Fifteen klicks north," Shiba admitted. "He wanted to take a nap and I did too and I was only going to get a drink but then I picked up your trail and it was fresher than the one the rest of the pack was following and I wasn't totally sure it was you so I thought I'd just follow it a little to double check and then it was so I got excited and just...forgot about him."

Kakashi pinched the bridge of his nose. "Shiba, you don't leave a pack member alone in hostile territory without telling him where you're going. Even if it's Akino."

"I know," said Shiba, ears pressed flat against his skull and tail tucked. "I'm sorry."

"Akino won't be happy," Kakashi warned, and groped in Itachi's direction for the chakra pill without moving his head. Itachi set it in his hand. Kakashi popped it in his mouth and swallowed it dry as its bitterness washed through his mouth, and the pill caught in his throat until he swallowed a second time. His eyes watered as chakra slammed into his system bright and sharp, and chased away his lingering aches. "Whatever he does to you, you deserve it."

"I know," Shiba repeated glumly. And then, as his ears swivelled, "Oh, no."

Kakashi cocked his head. "Ah. One moment," he said to Itachi, and turned expectantly.

A blur of grey-gold-white fur launched itself out of the bushes, and Akino's ice blue eyes locked on their target unerringly as he planted his paws and skidded to a stop. "Kakashi," he rasped stoically though his flanks heaved and his legs trembled with exertion.

Kakashi crouched and held out his hand. "Come here," he said, unable to keep the fondness out of his voice. Akino padded towards him regally, but the ninken's tail betrayed him with its slow wag. Kakashi buried a hand in Akino's thick ruff, and the ninken twisted to lick under Kakashi's chin. "I hope you've been keeping the others in line," he murmured as Akino's cold nose brushed against his ear.

Akino's answering growl rumbled low in his throat as he turned to glare at Shiba.

Shiba flopped onto his back in immediate surrender, his best combination of pitiful and sheepish as Akino loomed over him. "Sorry?" he tried.

Akino bared his teeth halfheartedly. "This one will deal with you later."

"Maa, you're lucky he's in a good mood," Kakashi said, amused, as Shiba wriggled back over to sprawl on Itachi's feet.

Akino's eyes snapped to Itachi, and for a moment, ninken and shinobi examined each other steadily. "Silence-black-scorch looks well," Akino told Kakashi, just as Itachi said to Akino politely, "You look well."

Shiba yipped his mirth. "That's adorable!" he crooned, mock-pouncing at Akino and dancing away, and Akino showed his teeth again.

Kakashi kept his face blank. "Akino says hi."

"We should depart," Itachi said, giving all three of them a faintly narrowed stare. "I will take point."

"Fine," Kakashi said. "Shiba, rearguard." He needed Akino to lean on in case he collapsed halfway. Which he wouldn't.

He did.

"Itachi, give me the other half," Kakashi said, propped up against Akino's shoulder as he pawed for his emergency medical pouch and found it missing. Itachi hadn't given it back. "The chakra pill. I'm fine, Shiba," he added as the ninken licked at his hand urgently.

Despite his mask, Kakashi could hear Itachi's frown. "Perhaps we should make camp and resume travelling at nightfall."

"Akino, how much farther?" Kakashi asked, blinking the world back into focus.

Akino twisted to look up at him. "You are quite debilitated," he noted.

"Akino," Kakashi warned sharply.

Shiba whined low in his throat, and Akino's ears twitched slightly flatter. "No more than thirty klicks," the ninken answered, clipped.

"I believe it will be to the detriment of your health and our safety for us to continue, even with the assistance of the chakra pill," Itachi said, and went in for the kill. "You said that you would ensure Sasuke's safety when I leave, but now I am unsure if I can trust that claim."

"Then you'll stay," Kakashi said, only half joking, deflecting the calculated barb with his own before it could sink in too deeply. When Itachi just looked at him silently, Kakashi closed his eyes, leaning a little more heavily on Akino. He didn't want to fight Itachi, didn't want them to pitch words at each other that they didn't mean to corner the other into their own course of action. "Shiba, perimeter sweep," he ordered, sinking down to sit heavily against the nearest tree. "We'll make camp for three hours before continuing the rest of the way." He opened his eyes and glanced to Itachi. "When we make contact with the rest of the pack, we'll take a longer break."

"I will set up the camp," Itachi said. "Taichou, you should sleep now."

Normally, Kakashi would argue, but the world had started doing the thing where it spun every time Kakashi moved his head. He waved his free hand in Itachi's direction, then used it to tug on Akino's fur until the ninken lay down beside him, his head in Kakashi's lap. Kakashi tangled his hand in Akino's pelt and let his eyelids drift shut. "I didn't mean to snap at you," he said, his voice embarrassingly slurred.

A wolf howled not far away, long and mournful. It took nearly ten seconds before Kakashi recognized its voice as Shiba's. "The pack wishes you return in one piece," Akino replied, gruff. "You have this one at your side already. There is no rush."

Kakashi wanted to respond, but his limbs were heavy and his head was light, and talking suddenly needed more strength than he had. He had pack here; that was safe enough for him to sleep.

Kakashi snapped awake with a looming anticipation. The sunlight that trickled through the leaves from overhead informed him that just over three hours had elapsed, and Yu's ever-present warmth radiated up from the ground beneath him. Akino raised his head from where he had one foreleg thrown over Kakashi's lap, ears pricked and eyes going from drowsy to alert in a split second. Itachi's eyes flickered open from where he had bundled himself in his cloak on the opposite side of the clearing, and at his side, Shiba flailed upright.

"Hm," said Kakashi.

Akino yawned, shoving himself upright and sauntering off to the side as he shook out his coat. "Brace yourself," he advised. Kakashi grabbed for him and missed when the sling aborted his movement.

"Get back here," Kakashi hissed as Shiba cackled gleefully.

Akino sat, settling his tail primly over his paws, and ignored him.

Kakashi briefly considered getting up before deciding it was better that he had something to brace against.

Uhei sprang out of the bushes with a high, excited, bark and Guruko bayed somewhere behind him as the hound charged. He would have headbutted Kakashi in the chest at full speed if Urushi hadn't body-checked the smaller dog out of the way, sending him tumbling across the clearing in a flurry of long limbs.

Urushi loped the last few strides, brushing the entire side of his head against Kakashi's face in greeting, and Uhei hit Urushi's broad side more than Kakashi when he flung himself at them a second time.

Another lithe body landed on Urushi's shoulders, wriggling down into the space between them. "Your arm!" Guruko yelped, dismayed, sticking his muzzle in Kakashi's sling.

"That's why you don't just charge at him like a new pup, Uhei," Urushi rumbled pointedly, nosing into the side of Kakashi's neck.

"I wasn't going to hit him," Uhei protested, nudging forcibly at his good hand until Kakashi scratched behind his ears.

Bisuke, as with everything he did, made his entrance unobtrusively. He wove under Urushi's legs, curling up on Kakashi's lap silently with his tail beating a slow tattoo against his kunai holster.

"Kakashi."

Kakashi glanced up to meet Pakkun's eyes from the ninken's perch atop Bull's head. "Pakkun," he said, and reached out. Pakkun leapt without hesitation, and Kakashi caught him against his shoulder.

Uhei yelped and Urushi staggered as Bull leaned down, pressing against them with his bulk. Bisuke grumbled a little as he and Guruko were flattened against Kakashi's chest. Kakashi glanced skyward, as if that would get him out of his pack's puppy pile, and that was the moment Shiba took a nosedive onto his face.

"Shiba!" Akino growled somewhere next to Kakashi's ear, but Kakashi huffed a laugh. His pack was here and he was of Hatake blood with or without the name, and this was the closest he was to whole he had been in a long time.

Later, with all his pack sprawled around the clearing or on him, Guruko and Uhei attacking the last of the chipped beef, and Itachi sandwiched between Shiba and Bull, Pakkun said in the human tongue, "What's the plan, boss?"

"I have one more stop in Hi to make before Itachi and I return to Kiri," Kakashi said. "Pakkun and Guruko, I need you to go back to Takehara with the activation orders. The last point operative was killed, and the situation destabilized before we could reach his backup."

"Takehara," Pakkun said, glancing up sharply. "Wasn't that - ?"

"It was," Kakashi said evenly. Pakkun fell silent. "Bull and Bisuke," he continued, ignoring the way his hounds plus Itachi watched him with a silent combination of concern and assessment. "Go ahead to Uzu and do some scouting; Command is eyeing it as a base of operations. Akino, Uhei, and Shiba, head north and leave a decoy trail, make it look like I'm heading into Shimo."

"Hai," Akino agreed, and Shiba whined high in his throat.

"When do we get to go with you?" Shiba asked, draping a paw on Itachi's leg. Guruko nodded agreement.

Kakashi glanced at Itachi. "We'll be back in Kiri by next week. I'll summon you then."

Bull let out a surprised whuff. "Really really?" Guruko demanded, his tail wagging furiously. Akino nodded regally, as if it were his due, and Bisuke brushed his head into Kakashi's hand from his perch on Kakashi's lap.

"Aa," Kakashi confirmed, rubbing Bisuke's ears. "Make sure you dispel in five days," he warned. "I don't have enough chakra to summon you across the ocean if you don't make it back to the Spirit Lands."

"Got it, boss," said Pakkun.

"I'll take Urushi with me," he added. "He looks least like a dog summon."

"Least like your summons, you mean," Bisuke interjected drowsily.

Kakashi cupped the little ninken's skull in his hand, rubbing a thumb over velvety-soft fur. "Exactly."

This reunion with his hounds would be brief, but the next would not.

"Time is running out," Itachi said quietly.

Kakashi, watching Shiba's tail disappear into the dawn-lit forest, sighed silently, the emptiness where his pack had been weighing on him once again. Urushi nosed his hand briefly and sat, leaning against Kakashi's leg. "Let's go into town," he said, instead of bringing up the heaviest topics that hung in the air between them. "We need more provisions before we try for the border."

Itachi acquiesced with an inclined head, letting the opportunity for that weighty conversation slide past without a fight. He was forever looking to the future, but his promised to be difficult and lonely. Maybe he too recognized this as one of the few moments he had left among allies.

They took to the road in civilian wear, including a thin cough mask and the miserable sling still for Kakashi, with Urushi trotting in the forest just at the edge of the trees as they walked along the road. The wolf-like ninken vanished as Kakashi and Itachi entered the town, circling back into the shadows.

Aoshima was a quarter the size of Takehara, a calmer, much sleepier town with buildings accented in muted colors to match. The roads were dirt but wide and hard-packed and warm, and people meandered past as though they had nowhere else to be. Itachi took it in with a shinobi's practiced eye and said, "A grocer or a general store would serve our purposes best."

Kakashi hummed. "Let's make a stop first," he suggested, and nodded down the street.

The teahouse was simple but elegant, of a traditional design with dark wood and tall windows. Itachi followed Kakashi's line of sight, then glanced back at Kakashi. "Very well," he said, when Kakashi raised an eyebrow expectantly.

They settled at a window table, close to the ground. Itachi ordered a pot of tea - green - and a plate of anko dango. "You enjoy tea," Kakashi noted, once the waitress had deposited the teapot and cups on a tray and retreated.

"Aa," Itachi said, reaching for the cups with easy grace. "I find it calming." Not just the drink, Kakashi knew, but all of this - the teahouse, watching the weather and the outside world, the stillness. Itachi's natural state was tranquility where his cousin was all restless or barely-restrained motion. Itachi poured Kakashi's tea, then his own.

Kakashi was somewhere between tea and sake in his own tastes. He watched the steam curl up from his cup in soft wisps, and its aroma drifted through the air. "Do you have a favorite?"

"I used to share a pot of tea with my mother in the mornings when I did not have missions," Itachi answered, taking a careful sip. "She had a fondness for a certain green tea leaf that originated from a plantation in northern Taki. I am not as particular as she was, but I will admit an inclination for green tea."

The dango arrived. Itachi motioned to the plate, but Kakashi shook his head, content with his tea. Itachi ate delicately, one piece at a time, and Kakashi nursed his cup, letting his gaze drift.

Outside the window, a bit of grey fur flashed as Urushi slunk down the narrow alley between an onsen and a butcher's across the street. The ninken raised his head to make eye contact with Kakashi before he whisked back into the shadows.

"Excuse me a moment," Kakashi said absently. Itachi glanced up, his eyebrows slightly creased, and Kakashi gave him a brief reassuring smile. "I'll be right back," he said. "Finish your dango. Order a fresh pot, if you like."

Itachi's face smoothed, and he nodded despite his well-concealed curiosity. "I will await your return," he said, and brought his teacup to his lips.

Urushi was nowhere to be seen when Kakashi made his way out of the teahouse, but his nose led him down the street, further into the center of the town. He'd had Urushi long enough to know that his ninken wanted him to see something that wasn't urgent enough to approach him directly - not dangerous, not a threat, but important nonetheless. He wandered down the street after the fresh trail, waiting for something to happen.

Kakashi froze mid step at a familiar scent, the mixture of steel and moonflowers stirring his memory. He turned towards it, taking an unconscious step back the way he had come, then a more deliberate one.

Rather than the traditional teahouse Itachi favored, he faced a brighter, more modern cafe. A glass case in the back showcased small cakes and pastries, and a selection of eclectic teapots sat on the shelf above the cafe worker's head. Wooden tables and cushioned chairs scattered the floor beyond the window, strings of electric lights dripped from the rafters, and leafy plants draped vines down pots set in the walls.

Three of the tables were occupied, but Kakashi's attention drew immediately to the little girl with a strip of cloth tied over her eyes swinging her legs from a chair too tall for her. She sat straight-backed and elegant despite her plain, well-worn clothes, loose strands of hair falling to her cheekbones as she set her half-drunken glass of milk down next to her plate and felt for her chopsticks. She looked just like her sister.

Here was Hyuuga Hanabi, the last of the Lost Four, inheritor of the strongest doujutsu-taijutsu combination in the Elemental Lands, the youngest princess of the Hyuuga Clan.

Kakashi took two more steps to the cafe entryway and reached for the door. He had just enough awareness to scan for enemy shinobi or unwelcome observers as the bell attached to the door tinkled cheerfully, and immediately, he locked eyes with the young woman sitting across from Hanabi. Her hair was cut in a severe line from the nape of her neck to below her chin, much lighter than its natural color, and she was wrapped in a light yukata and wore no visible weapons. Her lips moved soundlessly, and immediately, Hanabi slipped off her chair, ducking around to her side and pressing against her non-dominant shoulder with well-rehearsed movements despite her lack of sight.

Contact-colored eyes tracked Kakashi's approach calmly. He sat down across from her, and he knew his mask didn't quite hide his smile when he said, "Ready to come in from the cold, Cat-15?"


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18: Sasuke Gets The CliffNotes Version And It's All Horrible

Surprise, emotional repression is not the way to go.

* * *

MISSION REPORT D-633

Report received from ACNS: Involuntary contact made with Anbu Commander Kitsune and Anbu Captain Taka, allegiance: formerly Konoha, currently unknown. TAP73I now in custody of Kitsune and Taka. Likelihood of malicious intent: 33%.

Extraction impossible with current resources. Cat-15 advised TAP73I to hold position indefinitely.

Plan of action: Cat-15 will monitor the situation remotely and devise a course of action should the safety of the primary, tertiary, and quaternary targets destabilize. Extraction to be conducted in order of designation if necessary and possible. Cat-15 will continue to protect secondary target AT2 directly.

END REPORT

-Operative Cat-15

* * *

As it turned out, setting fires - or 'committing light acts of arson' as Neji once put it, was generally frowned upon in a shinobi village that had more or less just wrapped up a civil war. Everyone was still jumpy, and things catching on fire could bring down a whole bunch of shinobi frantic to find and stop the attack. Sasuke found this out firsthand the morning after Itachi left with the captain, and the only reason he was still in one piece was because Shisui was probably the fastest person alive and swooped in to bail him out. So. His bad.

"I'm going to murder him," Shisui said under his breath, depositing Sasuke in a grassy field at the edge of the treeline. He clearly wasn't talking about Sasuke though his cousin knew full well that he'd been the one to set the fire, so Sasuke exercised the self-preservation skill that he and Sakura both had but Naruto lacked, kept his mouth shut, and looked anywhere but at Shisui. "Stay here, Shi," Shisui ordered irritably from behind his leopard-mask. "I need to - damage control - " and he was gone. Sasuke felt a tiny pang of remorse.

Admittedly, maybe lighting up a pile of broken chairs in an abandoned alley wasn't the best idea, but Sasuke was careful. There wasn't anything else in the area that could burn, and he liked the dance of the flickering flames. And the captain had promised that they could do anything they wanted for three whole days - but he did say 'without being caught', so maybe he needed to work on that part a little.

Sakura had woken at the crack of dawn and promptly buried herself in one of the larger libraries, because something had clearly gone wrong with her. Hinata and Sai had gone along too, but Sasuke was pretty sure they weren't working their way through a pile of textbooks and encyclopaedias the way she was. Temari and Naruto had wandered into town to do some pickpocketing and shoplifting in the wealthier sector of the Village, while everything was still chaotic and security haphazard, and Gaara had followed along as either a sentry or a decoy.

Haku stayed behind in their library base with Zabuza-sensei, who was still not entirely there. Shisui said he'd gotten his metabolism all screwed up when he got tortured, so the medic-nin could never quite give him the right amount of any medicine. It was both hilarious and terrifying, because while seeing him all floppy was definitely funny, Sasuke had a very healthy fear of Zabuza-sensei, who would not appreciate being the source of anyone's humor. Neji stayed behind too, not to stand guard like Haku, but to meditate.

Three days of freedom, and he chose to meditate. Sasuke didn't understand him either.

Then again, Sasuke's choice of activity had led him...here. He glanced around him curiously. Grass, dirt, trees, rocks. At the edge of his hearing, running water burbled. With a cursory glance over his shoulder, he edged into the copse, following the sound to its source.

The whole war, the whole year, practically, had been on the ocean. Sasuke could run and fight on the water and swim if he needed to, and he was wearing his rebreather as always, which would make it difficult for him to drown. He wasn't uncomfortable with water. He was just - wary of it. Needed to keep his eye on it. The ground could swallow him in a douton and the air could twist into a fuuton, but Sasuke was far more paranoid of a suiton rising up out of the water at his back.

He reached the bank of the river. Frost crunched under his feet, and dead leaves scattered either side. The water flowed smooth and slow except for the gentle froth over an outcropping of rocks, entirely innocuous. Sasuke gave it a last suspicious glance and edged away, back towards the open field.

Empty space, different terrain - this had to be a training ground of some kind. Maybe this was Shisui's pointed way of telling him to practice his jutsu here instead of in the middle of the Village.

He was here. Training was on his list, anyways - three days' freedom was well and good, but he was a shinobi. He couldn't not train.

Sasuke considered sending a giant fireball straight up in the air, but he wasn't an idiot, and Shisui had probably meant to include ' keep your head down' with the ' stay here'. He gave the field one last scan and slid his feet apart into the opening stance for the first kata. He hadn't brought his cloak, and he shivered through the first repetition in the bite of the air. Winter had settled, even if it wasn't snowing yet like Haku said it would. After the second, as he picked up his speed to move faster and faster, his muscles warmed though his breath left soft white puffs in the air through the filter of his mask.

He ducked at the flicker of chakra behind him, sliding into a low crouch and reaching for his kunai holster, but it was only Shisui, stepping out of a shunshin with Neji in tow. Sasuke made a face and stood.

"Buddy system," said Shisui, gesturing Neji forward with a jerk of his chin. "I don't care what the captain said; whatever you do, everyone has one other person with them at all times."

That was fair. Sasuke scowled but nodded. Neji looked about as excited to be there as Sasuke was that he was there.

"I've brought Kyuu-chan back to base camp," Shisui went on. "Where're Rei-chan, Shichi-kun, and Roku-kun?"

"Stealing things in the rich people part of town," Sasuke said.

Shisui stared at him for a long moment. "Of course they are." His shoulders slumped slightly. "The two of you, don't leave this training ground - the captain hashed it out for us specifically. No Kiri, no Hanran, no Hana-ha."

"Hai," said Neji, and Sasuke echoed him.

"I'm going to - pull your teammates out of whatever mess they've gotten into," Shisui said, and vanished abruptly.

Sasuke looked at Neji. Neji looked back at him from beneath his ever-present wraparounds. "I assume you did something inadvisable," Neji said.

Sasuke bristled. "Not as inadvisable as stealing from rich people in an enemy Village."

Neji nodded, accepting that. "Would you like to spar?"

Sasuke had sparred with Neji enough to know that he probably wouldn't come out on top, but Shisui always said that every spar was a learning experience no matter who won. Also, he wouldn't mind setting something else on fire. "Yeah," he said.

Neji was fire-natured like Sasuke, but his was a seething smoulder to Sasuke's mercurial blaze. He also had a sense of fair play that bordered on patronizing - when he saw Sasuke hadn't brought his katana, he took off his tanto's harness and propped it up against a tree. Sasuke watched him with narrowed eyes. "Everything goes, shy of drawing blood?" Neji proposed.

"Sure," said Sasuke. Neji favored close combat and his blade more than Sasuke did, and Sasuke was a shinobi - shinobi didn't give up advantages when they were already behind.

Sasuke's Sharingan whirled to life with a handseal, the world turning bright and sharp, and he saw the answering flare of chakra as Neji activated his Byakugan. Neji set his feet and raised his hands before him, and Sasuke took the invitation to charge.

Sasuke palmed a pair of kunai as he sprinted, watched the impression of future Neji's dodge, and hurled the blades in quick succession. Neji spun to the side, but Sasuke swerved in his path, a third kunai in hand as he slashed at the older boy and his other arm snapping up to knock away the parry he knew was coming.

But his eyes only showed him one future of many fluid possibilities, and Neji had trained against him before. Neji vanished in an abrupt kawarimi that the Sharingan hadn't predicted, and Sasuke's attack struck wood with a hollow thunk.

Sasuke spun, his hands already flying through handseals, and spat a Goukakyuu as Neji as the older boy lunged. A trio of shuriken hissed back at him through the fireball, and he jerked away with a backwards twist that only barely managed to get him clear.

The misstep was enough of an opening for Neji, whose entire team drilled their speed during every training session. Neji came at him hard from the left, kunai upraised in a backwards grip, and Sasuke gritted his teeth as he drew his own, planting his other hand on the ground to flip out of the way again. He landed crouched with his kunai raised defensively as Neji slashed downwards. Sasuke battered it out of the way, barely, and the second and the third, but Neji's strikes were too fast, too precise for him to regain his balance. Neji lunged inside his guard, grabbing his wrist to force it out of the way, and pressed his kunai against Sasuke's collarbone.

Sasuke froze, face to face with Neji's covered eyes, arm straining in Neji's grip. His heart pounded still, his body caught up in the battle and the threat of the blade at his throat. Then he forced his muscles to relax, and Neji let him go.

"Watch the blind spot you make with the katon," Neji said, drawing back the kunai and slipping it back into his holster.

Sasuke grunted. The fight had been lost from that moment, he knew.

Of Yorozoku, Neji was the worst opponent for Sasuke - fast enough and canny enough to work around the future-sight, and he had a doujutsu that could see through the Sharingan's secondary advantage of genjutsu. But Sasuke would never learn to counter Neji's advantages the way he had Sasuke's if he wrote it off as a lost cause, so he took a step back, spun the kunai in his grip, and said, "Again."

Neji slid his feet apart into his opening stance. Sasuke charged.

Their final match ended in a draw when the afternoon sun prickling through the clouds reminded them that the hour for lunch had come and gone. Sasuke had a loop of wire around the back of Neji's neck with the ends fisted in one hand and a kunai at the hollow of his throat. Neji's palm lay flat against Sasuke's chest, just above his heart. Each stared at the other as their breaths rasped in their throats.

"Well fought," said Neji at last, dropping his hand.

Sasuke let the wire go, sliding the kunai back into his holster. "Yeah, good match," he said. He jogged to the treeline to retrieve the thrown kunai, and Neji did the same further out in the field. Never since they left Konoha had they ever had enough, even with frequent scavenging, and losing even one during practice meant one less on the battlefield.

Afterwards, he sat down in the field and lay back, staring up at the sky as the long grass shielded him from the wind that chilled his sweat-dampened skin. His Sharingan petered out when he stopped that chakra flow to his eyes, and the world returned to its normal, washed-out colors. Smoke curled lazily from the bit of dead brush that Sasuke had set on fire during the second match, which had taken both of them to put out.

Neji drifted over as well, buckling the harness for his tanto back on, and sat cross-legged and straight-backed next to him. "Your footwork has improved," Neji offered grudgingly, which was entirely Shisui's influence from the months when he had been Team Suzaku's primary sensei. Before, Neji had been entirely sharp edges and cutting comments, rather than mostly.

"Thanks," said Sasuke, equally reluctant, because Shisui had gotten to him too. He closed his eyes against the sunlight's glare. His stomach felt hollow, and the afterburn from exertion had begun to collect in his muscles. He rolled his head over towards Neji. "Where is this? Juu-sensei dropped me here in a shunshin. Didn't see which direction or anything."

"This training ground has been warded against the Byakugan," Neji said. "I cannot see beyond its borders."

"Just say that you don't know, and that we're stuck here," Sasuke muttered, the words muffled under his respirator.

Neji didn't move, but Sasuke could feel his glare. "Juu-sensei already instructed us to remain here until he returned for us."

Boring.

He should have just gone with Naruto and the desert siblings to steal things. Naruto was dumb and too loud, and Gaara was creepy and too quiet, but Temari? Pretty strong, pretty cool. She'd been the best shinobi of the eight of them when they'd spent the years running.

They'd added Haku to their number and become Yorozoku, and now the pack was the pack and they had Itachi, Shisui, Zabuza-sensei, and the captain, but in the very beginning for two years, they'd only had Neko-sensei.

Neko-sensei had never told them her real name. Names are dangerous, she had said for the first time of many when she was standing over the bodies of a team sent after them, with her katana dripping crimson and blood splattered all over her mask, days after That Night when it was just seven kids and one of her. Do you understand? They came after you because of your names. More will come if anyone finds out your names. It's safer to be nameless out here.

Living with the captain was like living with a legend - he was there, but not quite tangible, a little too perfect. They'd all heard the stories from other shinobi when they ran supply missions - Reiketsu Kakashi or Kage-Killer Kakashi or even just Raijuu, stories so tall Sasuke wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't seen the captain break a warship in half to rescue his team with his own eyes.

Living with Neko-sensei had been like living with a feral lioness - she was raw and rough and ferocious and fiercely protective. They watched her struggle and lie and steal, watched her hunt and kill, watched her leave them behind to provide for them and keep them safe. She was the first time Sasuke had thought, adults aren't flawless, but he and the rest of the pack trusted her unquestioningly nonetheless, to teach them and protect them.

And then abruptly, she was gone. She left them with Itachi and the captain and didn't look back, didn't contact them apart from one final word: clear. If this - Yorozoku and Hana-ha and Kirigakure - had been one possible future, Sasuke wondered what another would have been if they'd stayed with Neko-sensei.

Sasuke stole another glance sideways at Neji. They didn't talk about Neko-sensei among the pack, especially when they hadn't fully trusted the captain yet and then when they had the war and constant threat of ambush to worry about, and they didn't talk about Hanabi either. Did he and Hinata think about her? Wonder if she and Neko-sensei were dead or alive? Because even the edges of the war had taught Sasuke that people died suddenly, quietly, and sometimes left someone behind without them ever knowing they'd been left.

"I can see you doing that," Neji said pointedly.

Sasuke glowered at the sky. He reached down to his belt for his bone-mask and hooked it over his face and the respirator. Let him try to see through that.

"Tch," Neji scoffed.

"Do you think about them?" Sasuke asked abruptly.

"About who?" Neji shot back.

"Neko-sensei. And Hanabi."

Neji sucked in a sharp breath. "No," he said, clipped. "Thinking about them will do nothing. It is better to focus on the problems of today."

"Think they're alive?" Sasuke pressed. "It's been a year since we heard from them."

"What does it matter?" Neji said irritatedly.

Sasuke huffed and dropped it.

Just as Sasuke was beginning to shiver, a rush of wind and chakra prickled his senses and he was crouched on his feet with a hand over his holster before registering that it was Shisui again. "Right, kids," said Shisui, his affability back intact. "Ichi-kun and Kyuu-chan put together lunch, and everyone else is back at base and in one piece. Let's head on back."

Haku and Hinata both cooking meant lunch would be pretty decent, even though there wasn't much food in Kiri even after the war. Sasuke shoved to his feet, and Neji followed suit with a grace that Sasuke envied. Shisui held out both hands to them, and when they took them, pulled them along in a dizzying shunshin that deposited them at their library's doorstep. Sasuke shook his head to get rid of the lingering vertigo as Shisui palmed the door with a pulse of chakra.

"Oh my gods, Shi, look what we got!" Naruto yelled gleefully as soon as they stepped in the door, lunging towards him in a tackle. Sasuke ducked, but Shisui plucked his teammate out of the air without looking and set him back on his feet, so instead of bulldozing Sasuke into the floor, he just crashed into Sasuke's shoulder and bounced off.

"What?" snapped Sasuke, staggering backwards as Neji eeled around him and beelined for the food, hooking his shades up to the top of his head now that they were under the cover of their base camp.

"We got so much stuff, Shi, lookit, lookit!" Naruto dragged him by the wrist - past the still-steaming pot on the table, which Sasuke threw a despairing glance at, past the rest of the pack as Sakura waved at him and made no move to help - and into their converted sleeping quarters. "So! Much! Stuff!" Naruto repeated, dropping Sasuke's hand and doing a little twirl in the middle of the room.

Sasuke's eyes widened and he pulled off his mask for a better look, because the bottom bunks were all completely covered in clothes. Pants, shirts, jackets, all draped over the frames and blankets and sleeping bags, mostly dark colors but some brighter ones too.

"What - did you take off with an entire store?" Sasuke demanded. "Where did you even put it?"

Naruto cackled. "Shichi made sand clones to wear them and walked them back here! Check it out, I got you - "

Sasuke's stomach growled, and he said hurriedly, "Roku, I need to eat. Show me whatever after lunch." If he knew Naruto, the clothes-showing would take the entire afternoon and then some.

Naruto puffed up and then deflated, because they were all sensitive about food. "Fine," he said, jabbing a finger at Sasuke. "But you better eat fast, or I'll give all your stuff to Gogo-chan!"

Sasuke scoffed, already on his way to the platters of food on the far side of the main room. "Like she'll want it," he tossed over his shoulder.

"Do I ever say no to new clothes?" Sakura called, her mouth half full, and Temari laughed, cheerful and viciously satisfied.

"You would if they resembled Zabuza-sensei's cow patch-pinstriped combination uniform," Sai pointed out, and Sasuke snorted.

Haku twitched. "That particular outfit met an unfortunate accident while I was mending it," he said, and then checked over his shoulder. The curtain that served as a makeshift door to the captain and Zabuza-sensei's quarters didn't stir.

"I don't think he cares about what he wears," Shisui offered from his perch on a worn desk a little ways away from the pack. "He kind of just throws on whatever and sometimes it just...doesn't work."

"Those pieces did not work with anything," Haku said.

"Someone could make them work, I bet," said Sakura.

Sasuke tuned out the rest of the conversation in favor of the food. Today was oyako-don and gyoza, and Sasuke heaped an overflowing ladle of the chicken and egg over his rice, adding a dozen gyoza almost as an afterthought. He ignored Naruto's enthusiastic waving - he had since returned to his own lunch and couldn't talk with his cheeks bulging with food - and sat down with Hinata and Temari instead, tugging his rebreather down to hang around his neck. When Temari grinned down at him, he jerked his chin towards their sleeping quarters and raised an eyebrow.

Temari shrugged, but her smile had once again taken on a smug edge. "It wouldn't be fair if we didn't get something for everyone," she said. "We raided the stockrooms for most of that. It'll be a while before anyone notices anything missing."

"And you will not be doing that again," Shisui interjected pointedly.

"Yes, Sensei," said Temari, but her eyes sparkled with mirth.

"You especially, Shichi-kun," he added, narrowing his eyes at Gaara.

Gaara glanced up, blinked once, innocently, and went back to his food.

"The captain said we get three days to do whatever, though," Sakura piped up, although Sasuke doubted her chosen hobby of reading in the library was going to be blacklisted next.

"Yeah!" Naruto agreed, bouncing up and accidentally sending one chopstick catapulting across the room until Sai caught it midair and tossed it back. "We ain't gonna get caught getting new stuff!"

Shisui looked very much like he wanted to slam his own head into the wall. "Within reason. Not setting bonfires in the middle of town or robbing upper-caste boutiques or taking two dozen books from the library without checking them out."

All eyes swung to Sakura, who cringed. "I was going to bring them back when I was finished with them."

"We do not have library cards," Sai added. "The staff appeared short-handed, and in any case, approaching a staff member to register an account would compromise our identities, or betray our lack thereof."

Shisui stared dully at him. "What about training? Didn't you hellions want to train? Fun training?"

Sasuke exchanged a glance with Hinata, then Temari. "We can do that," Temari said magnanimously.

"Cool. Great," said Shisui, with marginally more enthusiasm "We'll head out to the training field after lunch. And another thing - from now on, in the village, we're going no masks, no henge. The Kiri forces are going to be told that Hanabi-ha is the Hanran's Hana Division, made up of a combination of mercenaries and Kiri shinobi that had been stationed away from the mainland."

"That shouldn't be a difficult story to sell," Haku noted, tapping the ends of his chopsticks against his lips. "There are numerous Academies and outposts on the outlying islands. Some shinobi are stationed there their whole lives and rarely if ever come to the Village proper."

Shisui nodded. "I need you guys to get really solid on your covers. Rei-chan and Ichi-kun, coordinate it and let me know by the end of the week what you all decide." He reached behind him. "We're going to need to start wearing these."

Sasuke's heart leapt into his throat. When he was a kid, the hitai-ate was all he'd wanted - it symbolized skill, strength, responsibility, acknowledgement - but every time he imagined receiving the headband at his graduation, it had borne Konoha's leaf, not Kiri's mist. He glanced up at the sudden silence and saw the same indecision on Naruto's face and Neji's, and even Temari's.

"Hey," said Shisui gently. "It's all a cover, yeah? Don't think about it too much. It's a stepping stone on the way back home."

"It's the mission," Hinata said, in Kyuu's controlled tones, low and dispassionate.

Shisui's brow crinkled a little, but Naruto said, "Yeah! It's just us being spies, like real shinobi!"

"We are real shinobi, idiot," Sasuke said reflexively, and Naruto scowled at him.

"If it helps," Shisui interrupted before Naruto could throw something or himself at Sasuke, "many of the Hana-ha shinobi have decided to wear the hitai-ate, but not on their foreheads, as is traditional."

Another small piece of rebellion; Hana-ha were good at that. Yorozoku were good at that. "That does help, Sensei," said Sakura, her eyes resolved. "Give us the hitai-ate."

The hitai-ate weighed heavily on Sasuke's bicep. A brief, chaotic scramble to divide up the spoils of stealing had followed lunch until Shisui called them back out in their criminally nice new clothes to do their 'fun' training. From his understanding, what separated 'fun' training from 'not fun' training was the absence of live weapons, and Sasuke wasn't sure at all how that could be fun.

"What do you think?" Sakura asked, dropping back to his side from where she had been walking with Hinata and Haku. "Another three-way team battle?"

Sasuke scowled, hidden under his rebreather. "Probably." Training had been nothing but teams and team formations and team battles since Tetsu - since the very beginning, when apparently the captain himself had set their teams - and it wasn't that Sasuke didn't like Sakura or Naruto, because they were pretty all right even if Sakura was a girl and civilian-born and Naruto was way too loud and kind of dense sometimes, but when he could admit it to himself, he resented being put on the weakest team.

He'd learned a lot from Zabuza-sensei, who was much, much tougher and a lot meaner than the Academy sensei and definitely more short-tempered than Shisui or Itachi, but he was an elite shinobi and a good teacher. And then Zabuza-sensei had dumped them like a sack of hot potatoes and taken Team Suzaku with him on his missions instead, so. That was kind of a blow. True, Haku was his apprentice already and had been an actual hunter-nin, and true, Temari had practically been a genin when they met her, and Neji was a year older than him, had activated his doujutsu, and was all right for a Hyuuga even if he did tend to stay behind his teammates in battle because he wasn't quite to their level yet, but they'd gone on real missions and real fights.

Team Genbu had done solo missions, and even gone on a long-term infiltration in the Lower City, because Sai had his ink and Anbu training, and Hinata had her eyes and the thing she did where she became different people, and Gaara had his sand and a body count nearing if not already in the triple digits. Sasuke was eighty-five percent certain that Gaara had killed someone or multiple someones on that long mission that none of them, not even Shisui, would admit.

Meanwhile, Sasuke and Sakura and Naruto drilled and sparred and traded off endless sentry and cooking duty, or fought in battles under very close supervision, except for the one time on the warship in the harbor. Their only claim to fame was that they'd gotten captured on their very first solo mission, a supply run, gotten tortured, and needed the rest of the pack and all of the sensei, plus the captain, to rescue them.

So. In general, Team Byakko didn't tend to do very well in three-way team battles. Sasuke didn't have high hopes for today, either.

Sakura hummed, her fingers coming up to cover the plate on her own hitai-ate absently. "I think it'll be fun," she said optimistically. "At least no one'll be trying to kill us. This is supposed to be a break," she added when Sasuke just shrugged, but his mood had no effect on hers whatsoever.

"Okay, everyone," Shisui called, clapping his hands together. "Here are the rules for today's training exercise. It's called - " he paused dramatically, " - Assassins."

The pack exchanged dubious looks. "Is this kinda like when we played 'Shinobi' when we were kids?" Naruto asked skeptically.

"You're not going to be running around throwing sticks at each other," said Shisui after a confused pause. He grew up during the Second Shinobi War and graduated to genin at age six; he'd probably never played the game in his life. "The point of the exercise is to eliminate your assigned target while avoiding whoever has you as their target. You can only eliminate your target, and once you do, their target becomes yours. The goal is to be the last person standing."

Sakura raised her hand. "Does everyone know who everyone else's assigned target is?"

"Nope," said Shisui. "This is a game for stealth, strategy, and deception. I'll let you figure that out. There're two ways to eliminate someone: pin them for a three-count or steal their hitai-ate without damaging it - so everyone, tie yours somewhere accessible, single bow knot. No ninjutsu, no genjutsu, no doujutsu, and no live weapons."

"Boo," complained Naruto, screwing up his face and sticking out his tongue.

On the far side of the group, Neji looked faintly disgruntled. "Using natural abilities should be allowed," he said.

Shisui raised an eyebrow, amused. "Hey, I'm just trying to give you all a sporting chance against Shichi-kun. In any case, everyone can stand to work on the basics." Temari was nodding. Sasuke agreed - reluctantly. "Any questions before we start?" he asked cheerfully? "No? Ten seconds to get as far away as you can, and then I'll find you all and give you your targets individually. And - scatter!"

Sasuke bolted, his feet carrying him off instinctively before his mind registered that he was running. Out of the corner of his eye he could see a blur of black hair and black cloth as Sai streaked into the cover of the trees to his right.

"Stop!"

Shisui's voice drifted faintly on the wind, and Sasuke skidded to a stop under a crooked beech. He turned in a slow circle and caught a flash of dark cloth on his other side maybe eighty meters away. He watched, but whoever it was shifted until the tree trunk covered them entirely.

Sasuke waited. The morning's clouds hadn't cleared, and the sunlight that trickled through cast an omniscient grey shadow over the training ground. He still didn't have his cloak or a jacket, but he was now wearing a longsleeved shirt with a high collar to block the wind from the thievery team's haul. The cold was bearable now.

A familiar rush of chakra and wind announced his cousin's arrival. "Hey there, Shi-kun," said Shisui breezily. A crow perched on his shoulder - not his flock leader, but Dashi, who croaked a greeting and ruffled the feathers at the base of his neck.

"Hi," said Sasuke, half to Shisui and half to Dashi. Dashi rattled approvingly.

"Your target is Ichi-kun," Shisui said. "Good luck."

Sasuke was doomed.

Shisui vanished in another shunshin, and Sasuke stared blankly over the field and contemplated his misfortune. Naruto or Sakura? Easy. Sai or Neji? Doable, with the game restrictions. Haku or Temari?

Nah. At least, not by himself.

He needed an ally, or allies. He raised his eyes to the sky and heaved a deep sigh, resigned. Even in an individual game, he always fell back on Sakura and Naruto.

"Ready!" Shisui's voice carried across the training ground, and Sasuke crouched into the grass, tense. "Go!"

Distance first. Sasuke didn't know where anyone was except Sai, roughly, or who was after him. The only person he was absolutely safe to be alone with was now Haku. He stole into the trees for the cover, even knowing that most of the others would do the same thing.

A sudden scuffle made him freeze and then duck, and he glanced through the branches of the bush in time to see Sai land in a crouch, turn, and lunge at Neji in a second attempt at a tacke. Neji swerved gracefully out of the way and took off through the trees with Sai hot on his heels. Sasuke paused for a minute and then kept going. Sai seemed like a safe bet for an ally, but it could all be for show - it was unlike him to show his hand so early.

He nearly tripped over Sakura five minutes later when he leapt over a tiny stream into the patch of reeds she was hiding in. He jerked back, bouncing out of reach, but the first thing out of her mouth was, "Oh, thank the gods."

Sasuke eyed her suspiciously, poised to defend or run. "Why?"

Her shoulders slumped. "I have Shichi," she groaned. "Shi, you have to help me."

Shisui must really have it out for Team Byakko. Maybe it was payback for the arson thing and the book-stealing thing. Sasuke met Sakura's eyes grimly. "I have Ichi."

Sakura whimpered.

And of course, to complete their circus of misfortune, the very distinct rustle-crunch of Naruto trying to sneak anywhere approached until Naruto himself stumbled out of the bushes and babbled, "Shi, Gogo-chan, I know it's an individual competition but it'd be pretty smart if we teamed up, huh?"

Sakura and Sasuke exchanged a glance. "Who do you have?" Sasuke asked, resigned.

Naruto slumped dramatically. "Rei-nee."

Shisui definitely had it out for them. They took a moment to commiserate in their mutual despair.

"I don't care if I don't win," Sasuke muttered. "I just want to take out at least one person."

"Yeah," Sakura agreed. "Team? We can totally take out at least one of our targets if we work together."

"Yeah, team!" Naruto cheered, and Sasuke lunged automatically to slap a hand over his mouth.

"Not so loud," hissed Sasuke, throwing a wild glance over his shoulder.

"Okay," said Sakura, propping her hands on her hips. "Our targets are Rei-nee, Ichi, and Shichi. Who do we think we have the best shot of eliminating?"

"Not Ichi," Sasuke admitted grudgingly. "Black-ops hunter-nin." They'd probably never even find him unless he came for one of them.

"Shichi's only a problem if he tries," Sakura pointed out. "It's a fifty-fifty shot at worst."

True. Gaara hated running, anything physical, and not being able to use his sand - pretty much everything involved in this exercise. But going after Gaara also had a slight but still significant chance of being smashed into bits if he didn't stop his sand in time, regardless of whether he liked them (Naruto), tolerated them (Sasuke and Sakura), or hated them (a vast majority of the population).

Sasuke grimaced. Naruto agreed. "Rei-nee?" Naruto offered weakly.

"I think we'll have to," said Sakura, her brow creased in concentration. "Let's run a double-decoy. She'll definitely hear Roku coming - "

"Gogo-chan!" Naruto protested, drooping.

" - but if Shi ambushes her while she's distracted, she'll think Roku's the distraction and Shi's going to try and tag her out. Then, when she's more concerned with Shi, Roku can grab her hitai-ate."

That sounded...all right. "What are you going to do?" Sasuke asked.

"I'm the pre-decoy," Sakura said. "I'm just gonna go talk to her."

Naruto's face scrunched up. "Y'think that's gonna work?"

Sakura smiled. "I'll tell her I need help taking down Ichi. He's Shi's target, so I know he won't be hers."

"Hers might be you," Sasuke pointed out.

"Then I'll make an excellent pre-decoy and you better come help me before she catches me," Sakura said.

Fair.

Naruto squinted somewhere between Sakura's head and Sasuke's. "What - d'you think Rei-nee and Ichi'll be working together? They're teammates too."

"No," said Sasuke with certainty. Temari and Haku were both apex predators in this game; solo apex predators didn't hunt with each other when the potential damage from one of them turning on the other outweighed the comparatively small benefit of working together to catch easy prey.

"Let's go," Sakura urged. "I don't want to get ambushed by staying in one place too long. I'm first contact, so I'll take point. Roku, mid. Shi, rear. And - "

"Don't let anyone sense me, I know," Sasuke finished impatiently.

Sakura smiled a little sheepishly. "Uh, yeah. So - "

They sensed it all at the same time, some combination of air displacement or the feather-light footstep or a shift in the shadows, and all three of them turned, their heads snapping around to face the disturbance. It was only Hinata, who froze like a deer but watched them calmly with contact-colored seagreen eyes that flicked to them each in turn. "Are you targeting me?" she asked, still tensed to run. "I'm not after any of you."

"No," Naruto blurted, before Sasuke could think to bluff.

Hinata studied their trio a moment longer and then nodded. She whisked away back the way she had come without another word, vanishing quickly into the dim forest.

Sasuke frowned, the sense that something had been off pinging in his mind. "That wasn't Kyuu," he said. "Moe? Tatsuko?"

"Definitely not Moe, maybe Tatsuko." Sakura watched the place where the other girl had disappeared, mystified. "But why would she be using a civilian persona now?"

"Maybe it's a new one that's half civvie half kunoichi," Naruto suggested. "Like Kyuu and Tatsuko mashed together."

"She didn't make the Tatsuko one too long ago, though," Sakura noted. "Maybe she wanted something a little less intense than Kyuu but still shinobi."

In any case, they didn't have to stand around gossiping about it now. "Let's move out," said Sasuke. If they stood around any longer, Temari would probably just stumble into them the way Hinata had. Technically Naruto and Sasuke had done the exact same thing too, because that was just how things tended to go with Team Byakko.

Sakura set the pace at a light jog, darting nimbly through the trees on the ground level. Naruto kept pace about fifty meters to her right, and he was definitely trying to be quiet but Sasuke could still hear the abnormal crinkle of leaf litter above the branches shivering in the wind.

Sasuke had the best vantage point, taking up the rear, and his stealth had always been the best in his team. He caught a glimpse of Hinata again, just a flicker in and out of his range of vision, and someone slinking through the undergrowth that had to be either Sai or Neji or Haku, but no one tried to attack. He lost sight of them, but maybe they were just biding their time. He and Naruto and Sakura were basically a row of ducklings all lined up for a fox, anyways, it wouldn't be hard to pick any one of them off.

Their 'plan' was a plan that relied on a lot of luck and also, not that he'd tell his teammates, the three of them providing too tempting a target not to attract hunters while being a big enough group that attacking them head on would give any of the pack pause except Gaara. They'd come across Temari eventually, and she was straightforward enough to confront them head-on to at least see what they were trying to do.

Sasuke had known Naruto for about four years now, and he'd discovered that among many bizarre quirks, the blond either had wildly bad luck or wildly good luck on any given occasion. For example - being born on the night of the Kyuubi attack, becoming the jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi, becoming the primary target of torture aboard the Jurojinmaru: massively bad luck. Surviving and escaping the ambush that killed his Anbu guard during That Night, meeting the rogue Ichibi jinchuuriki who promptly decided to follow him home, a really fast healing factor and in general, surviving as long as he had: massively good luck.

So when he heard Temari's voice say, "Hey, Go-chan," some ways ahead of him, he was unsurprised and mostly just resigned at Naruto's power to make things happen.

"Rei-nee, you have to help me!" Sakura cried immediately, parroting almost exactly what she'd said to Sasuke. "I have Ichi."

Temari huffed a laugh. "It's an individual game," she reminded her. Sasuke stole forward, stepping lightly as he advanced. "But I'm thinking a temporary alliance might be a good - "

Naruto charged out of his bush with a whooping war cry, flinging his entire body at Temari in a whirl of stubby limbs. Sakura yelped, high and surprised and entirely fake, as Temari ducked and Naruto went sailing over her head. He landed in a crouch on all fours, cackling, and pounced again.

Sasuke abandoned stealth for speed, shooting forward as Temari tossed Naruto over her shoulder. Sakura took advantage of the opening to sweep Temari's feet out from under her, landing in a low stance as the older girl twisted to roll to her feet in a crouch. But Sasuke was there when she came up, one arm blocking her instinctive punch and the other reaching for the hitai-ate on her belt.

Even with the sudden ambush, Temari was fast and nimble enough to evade, sliding out of the way of his grasping hand and leaping up in an aerial somersault when Sakura threw a roundhouse kick at her back. Naruto, evidently not seeing a problem with reusing the same technique until it worked to his satisfaction, launched himself a third time and this time connected with Temari midair, sending them both tumbling into the bushes.

"Now, now!" Naruto yelped, high and panicked, and in unison Sakura and Sasuke jumped towards where they'd vanished.

Naruto made a sound like an enraged cat and Sakura let out a quiet oof as Temari lobbed Naruto bodily into her, but Sasuke swerved around them both and dove, managing to get a hand around Temari's ankle as she was about to leap away. She staggered but didn't fall, but that was okay because Sakura lunged in time to collide with her, catching both of the older girl's hands in her own. With a crow of triumph, Naruto flopped more than jumped at them, and as Temari slithered out of Sakura's grasp, yanked Temari's hitai-ate clean off her belt.

Sasuke let go and rolled over, spitting dirt, and sprawled back against the nearest tree as Temari leapt away, too late. Annoyance flickered over her sharp features, a flash of temper, before it vanished like quicksand and she gave them a wry smile. "You caught me. Good work."

"Yatta!" Naruto cheered, because not gloating was probably not something that had occurred to him. "Shi, Gogo-chan, we did it!" Naruto lunged at Sakura in a tackle-hug, and Sakura caught him with a laugh, her eyes alight, and let him swing her around in a circle. She patted his arm to get him to put her down.

When she stepped back, she had Naruto's hitai-ate tangled in her fingers.

Sasuke boggled. Naruto looked at the hitai-ate in his hand, looked at the one in Sakura's hand, and said, "Hey, isn't that my…" and then gaped silently.

Temari started to laugh.

"You're terrible," Sasuke said, eyeing Sakura with newfound wariness and respect.

She beamed, victorious and bashful at once. "Sorry, Roku," she said.

"You said you had Shichi!" Naruto protested, outraged. "Gogo-chan!"

Temari barked a laugh. "Shichi was my target," she said, grinning. "He's out. Has been for the last ten minutes."

If Gaara was out, there was now at least a twenty-five percent chance that Sakura's new target would be Sasuke. Sakura realized this at the same time, and she turned to meet his suspicious stare with mock-innocence. She offered him a sweet smile. "Shi-kun, we're still allies, right?"

Ha. "Nope," he said, and turned tail and fled while he still had a head start. Better to run now than let her worm her way back into his trust and backstab him the exact same way.

The pro: he and Sakura and Naruto had managed to eliminate Temari, which was pretty good even if they had outnumbered her three to one. The cons: Sakura had just been using him and Naruto both, Sasuke had no real of finding let alone tagging Haku out, and someone coming after him - probably Sai or Neji - now had a lone target. He needed to change at least one of those.

He changed his course, angling back out to the open field, where the grass brushed his shins and left beads of water soaking into his pants. The clouds had darkened; even though he'd left the shadows of the trees, the light was just dim enough that he had to strain his eyes when he checked the treeline behind him.

One sweep and nothing - just the easy rattle of naked branches and the small-leafed shrubbery with the wind. Sasuke shivered and swivelled slowly. He squinted. He said out loud, "Even if you tag me out, you can't get Ichi by yourself."

A pause, long enough that Sasuke wondered if he'd called out a really springy bush or something by mistake. Then a shadow detached from the rest and Neji slid out of the trees, the loose ends of his hitai-ate fluttering behind where it was tied on his arm. "You believe you will improve those odds with an alliance?"

Sasuke glowered. "It's basic math," he pointed out. "Sure, you can take me out. Go after him by yourself, let me know how that goes for you."

Neji stalked closer, and Sasuke tensed. "Fine," said Neji. "We will ally until Ichi has been eliminated."

"Great," said Sasuke unenthusiastically. "Can you track him without your doujutsu?"

Neji scoffed. "Just because I could activate my doujutsu by the time I could walk does not mean I am overly reliant on it."

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Is that a yes or what?"

"Ichi is the best of our team at stealth, but it is possible," Neji allowed.

"Well," Sasuke said, "I guess if we don't find him he'll definitely be able to find us."

"Undoubtedly," Neji agreed.

Sasuke eyed him skeptically. "You think you can hold him down long enough for me to grab his hitai-ate?"

"If you are able to identify an opening, I will not need to hold him down," Neji shot back.

Sasuke bit back a grumble. If only he had Neji as his target instead of the other way around.

They ran a two-man search formation back into the wooded area, with Neji on point and Sasuke staggered a little ways behind him because despite Neji's snobbishness and Sasuke's annoyance, he was the better tracker. He wasn't sure what'd happened to Shisui or everyone who'd gotten out, but the trees had gone silent and even though their barren branches could hide only a fraction of what they could in the spring, he didn't see even a hint of anyone else.

This game had turned into a fun bit of role reversal, just to keep life interesting, since Neji and Sasuke had grown up hunted and Haku had grown up hunting. Still, that wasn't exactly fair because Haku had never really been on the top of the food chain, and also after the Konoha kids had run into the Suna siblings, there was an overarching terror and solace in the fact that any and all hunters that came after them would be subject to an immediate and enthusiastic attempt at smashing them to bits by Gaara.

The point was, Haku knew a lot about chasing, but Neji and Sasuke knew a lot about being chased.

Neji took off suddenly without a word, sprinting through the barren trunks. Sasuke bolted after him blindly, hurtling a fallen log and zigzagging over a pile of rocks even though he saw exactly nothing. After nearly thirty seconds of flat-out sprinting, a shadow flitted around a copse of droopy trees in the far distance and Sasuke put his head down and ran.

Haku was the fastest person on the fast person team, but Neji was also a member of the fast person team and Sasuke was the fastest person on his team, so between the two of them, Sasuke had a half-hearted optimism that they could run Haku down.

Their quarry veered away sharply, swinging back around in their direction. Past him, past the break in the trees, Sasuke spotted the thick hemp rope strung along worn wooden posts - the training ground boundary. He gritted his teeth and ecked out a final burst of speed, throwing himself forward to intercept Haku.

Sasuke caught him with a glancing blow to the knee with his shoulder and Haku spun away as Sasuke landed heavily in the dirt, but even that momentary delay was enough for Neji to join the fray. Neji's lunge almost matched Haku's, but less pure speed and more grace. He threw two open-handed strikes, weaving around Haku's retaliatory blow, and got himself flung into the closest tree as Haku made his getaway.

Attempted to, actually, because Sasuke tackled Haku into the frosty loam to his soft huff of surprise. Haku jabbed a hand into his stomach, and one at his throat that he just barely blocked, and Sasuke struggled to keep a hold on Haku's elbow as the older boy twisted sharply and vaulted into an aerial flip. "A little help here?" Sasuke snapped over his shoulder at Neji. Haku wrenched his arm out of his grip, hit the tree trunk with both feet, and launched himself through the air.

"If you could keep a hold on him for longer than half a second, that would be extremely helpful," Neji sniped back, ricocheting off a knobby trunk directly into Haku's trajectory and forcing him to divert back to the ground.

"There's no need to fight over me," Haku said, flattered, as Sasuke did his damndest to land at least one punch. He didn't, but he also managed to dodge a lightning-fast butterfly kick that would have been devastating had it landed, so he counted it as a win.

Neji took the split-second recovery at the tail end of the attack to dart in close, wrap a hand around Haku's bicep, and heave him over his shoulder in a throw, but Haku rolled over in his grip and brought them both crashing down to the ground. Sasuke dove for them.

They landed in a tangle of limbs, all three of them, probably the worst display of shinobi-ness ever as they grappled blindly on the ground, crushing fallen twigs and dead leaves beneath them. Someone's elbow struck a glancing blow on the edge of Sasuke's respirator and his eyes watered in response, but he clawed grimly at snatches of Haku's clothes. The end of Haku's hitai-ate brushed his fingers, and he yanked, tumbling backwards. "Got it!" he cried victoriously, and immediately realized his mistake when Neji extracted himself from Haku in record time and pounced.

That was a dumb mistake. That was a Naruto mistake, which meant he'd been spending too much time with his teammate. Sasuke backpedalled furiously and dropped the hitai-ate, throwing a wild look over his shoulder for an escape route. "Is he my target?" he demanded of Haku as the older boy sat up to watch.

Haku shook his head, and as Neji lunged, mouthed Kyuu.

Sasuke'd forgotten all about Hinata, and promptly forgot about her again when he misjudged his dodge and tripped over a snarl of protruding tree roots. He stumbled, and Neji helped him the rest of the way down by sweeping his legs out from under him. He hit the ground on his back, the air rushing out of his lungs, and he struggled to get a breath in as he caught both of Neji's wrists in his hands. Even unable to grab the hitai-ate tied around Sasuke's arm, he straddled Sasuke and leaned down, pinning him.

Sasuke wrenched his entire body to the side and almost, almost, rolled them over, but Neji braced his knee against the ground and shoved him back.

"One," Neji counted aloud, bearing down with his slightly-heavier-than-Sasuke weight.

Sasuke struggled. He got a leg up and kneed Neji in the gut, and the older boy bit back a grunt at the impact.

"Two."

Hinata slunk out of the bushes behind Neji's shoulder. Sasuke stiffened. "Hey!" he snapped, jerking his chin at her.

Neji gave him a condescending head tilt for the obvious attempt at distraction. Sasuke gave a mental shrug - his loss, since Sasuke was pinned. "Three," he said smugly.

Hinata whipped the hitai-ate off her cousin's arm in one smooth movement. Neji whirled, practically flinging himself off of Sasuke and digging an elbow in his ribs in the process, and Hinata smiled at him angelically while Sasuke wheezed on the ground. Sasuke couldn't see Neji's eyes but he was sure they were as wide as his mouth, which he could see.

Served him right. Prick.

"Kyuu-chan wins, I believe," said Haku into the resounding silence, hiding a smile.

Sasuke blinked awake groggily, staring straight up at the distant ceiling. There was a warm, heavy weight on his chest and he was squashed up against yet another. The makeshift pillow beneath his head rose and fell rhythmically. These were not unfamiliar feelings, but given that Sasuke had definitely gone to sleep in his own bunk, he wasn't quite sure how he'd ended up in the middle of the puppy pile.

He dragged himself out from under Naruto's arm, distangled his legs from Sai's, and wriggled out from under the blanket, eyes half-open. The cold hit him immediately and he shivered, stumbling to his bunk to grab his fur cloak, and sat on Naruto's bottom bunk numbly to finish waking up. He could see his breath in the air.

Ridiculous. They were indoors. San's caves in the middle of the forest were warmer than this place.

That was why they'd all ended up on the ground in a pile of limbs and blankets - the cold. The hunting game in the training ground three days ago had tired them all out, to Shisui's delight, and so he'd devised another series of training games that kept them busy enough that Naruto only graffitied three buildings with paint he'd gotten from who knew where, but last night the chill had woken Sasuke in the middle of the night and evidently prompted his still-asleep hindbrain to seek out the warmth of the growing pile of pack on the floor. Even Gaara, lying flat out at the very bottom and therefore warmest part of the tangle, had eyes half-lidded in displeasure at the cold.

Grudgingly accepting that he wasn't going to get any warmer sitting here, Sasuke reached up to his bunk for his respirator and pulled it over his head, wrapped the cloak around his shoulders a little more securely, and padded out to the main room.

Shisui wasn't there, but Zabuza-sensei and Haku were. Zabuza-sensei had improved rapidly after burning through whatever meds the medics'd had him on, and as far as Sasuke could tell, was back to his normal asshole self. This morning he was perched on a table shoved up against the wall with Kubikiribocho resting on his knees, glowering at Haku - or more specifically, at the tiny bundle of white fur cupped in his apprentice's hands. Haku looked up and beamed, which was the most animated Sasuke had seen him maybe ever. "Look what I found," he said, and held it towards him. The fur moved. It had tiny, dark eyes and a pair of long ears folded along the line of its skull.

"A rabbit." Sasuke frowned, confused. Was Haku trying to show them what breakfast was going to be? It was a very small rabbit, probably a baby, and would barely be a single bite without its pelt.

"A white rabbit," Haku agreed, pleased. "I'm going to keep it and raise it as a pet."

Sasuke glanced at Zabuza-sensei reflexively. "Haku," Zabuza-sensei growled, rolling his eyes.

Haku sighed and said, "I'm going to keep it and raise it to use as a decoy in battle."

Sasuke nodded. That made more sense. "Where's - ?"

"Konoha has shit to do," Zabuza-sensei said. "He got jack done trying to herd you hellions and now he's buried under a metric fuckton of paperwork. You're awake. Congrats, you two get to do breakfast."

Sasuke made a face, but he didn't really mind cooking, and Zabuza didn't take no for an answer. The rabbit vanished into one of Haku's pockets and he stood, glancing to Sasuke expectantly. "Shall we?"

Sasuke grunted assent and led the way to the door. The village was in the bizarre stage between wartime and peacetime, between assigned meal rations and buying food like any other citizen. Technically, as Hanabi-ha - or now Hana Division, they should grab meals from the communal mess set up in the Old Academy cafeteria.

But that stuff was crap. They were better off making their own food.

Sasuke tugged the door open and stopped short. Snow blanketed the ground, soft flakes drifting down thick and fast to join the drifts already piling high atop the bushes at the edges of the grass.

"If you don't close that damn door I'll kick your ass," Zabuza growled from behind him. Haku quirked a wry smile as he slipped out first, preceding Sasuke into the chill air. Sasuke stepped outside and closed the door behind them.

Over breakfast, the rest of the pack received the news of the snow with glee, apathy, or dismay depending on their relationship with the stuff. Everyone except Sakura, who was dull-eyed and listless.

Sasuke caught her eye, looked deliberately down at the food - plain rice, miso soup, and tofu - then back up at her and raised an eyebrow. Not good enough for you?

Sakura looked at him, tired, before remembering herself and mustering up a smile and a thumbs up. Everything's good.

Sasuke narrowed his eyes. Sakura deliberately ignored him.

Nightmares, again. They all had nightmares now and again, but Sakura's were particularly persistent.

Sakura was glaring at him now, like she could read his thoughts. She didn't like to talk about them, didn't like to talk about how she couldn't shake them off, so nobody ever mentioned them. She jabbed her chopsticks at him in warning before dipping down for the agedashi tofu.

"Something you two want to share with the class?" asked Shisui, amused.

Sasuke stuffed rice into his mouth. Sakura said brightly, "I read a book yesterday about the digestive processes of cows yesterday, Sensei, did you know they have four stomachs?"

Sasuke watched Naruto spray paint an extremely unflattering nose on the wall and said, "Why am I here?"

"You're my lookout!" Naruto said cheerfully without looking up, adding a pair of buckteeth in bright purple.

Sasuke crossed his arms. "That's Shichi."

Gaara, perched on his heels in a patch of sunlight on the edge of the sloping roof above him, blinked languidly but otherwise ignored them.

"Nah," Naruto dismissed. "Shichi's here to make sure this looks right. Like that guy."

"Like who?" asked Sasuke, already regretting asking.

"You know," said Naruto. "That one guy the sensei told him he could off. Michio? Mochichimo?"

Sasuke doubted any human being could look like the monstrosity Naruto'd created, but Gaara examined the mess of paint, nodded gravely, and pronounced it, "Michishio."

"Yeah, that guy," Naruto agreed, pleased. "Rei-nee says he's a real pizza word and Ni doesn't like him either."

"Piece of work?" Sasuke had gotten used to however Naruto's weird brain translated things.

"Uh huh." Naruto wasn't paying much attention, since he needed most of said brain to do one thing at a time.

"Michishio," Gaara repeated quietly, and blinked.

Sasuke gave him a wary stare.

As he watched, Gaara poked around the roof tiles next to him. One came free, and Gaara batted it over the edge, leaning over to watch it hit the ground with avid interest.

"Hey," said Sasuke, turning back to Naruto. "This stuff is flammable. Let's light it on fire."

"Huh?" Naruto squinted at the spray can. "It's what? No, this is paint."

"I said flammable, moron, that means we can set it on fire," retorted Sasuke.

"Oh." Naruto looked back at his painting, considering. "I dunno. Should we?"

"Yes," answered Gaara.

"Okay, but we're gonna have to split fast, after," Sasuke warned, even as he gathered chakra to his hands.

Sasuke set the graffiti painting on fire.

They ran.

"You smell like paint and smoke," Temari noted dryly as they tumbled back into the library.

Sasuke grunted, trying to even his breathing back out, as Gaara brushed past him to tuck himself up against Temari's side. Naruto cackled under his breath, wriggling in place. "Where's everyone else?" asked Sasuke.

"Sensei's asked us not to steal for at least today," Temari said, "so Kyuu-chan and Ni and Hachi went to go run a quick con and panhandle. Ichi and Go are on meal duty."

"Rei-nee, you didn't go?" Naruto chirped.

"Nah, I'm babysitting," said Temari, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. The library was empty, but the curtain over Zabuza-sensei and the captain's room was drawn.

"The fuck did you just say?" The snarl carried from behind the curtain was noticeably slurred.

"Go back to sleep, Sensei, you're hearing things," Temari called back without missing a beat. Then, to Sasuke and the others, "Kurumi-sensei tried another mixture of meds on him after breakfast and it's made him kind of batty."

Zabuza-sensei'd never gotten hurt badly enough to need heavy drugs, but some combination of whatever injuries he'd collected during the Mizukage's assassination had him out for the count for over a week. Not even when he'd gotten poisoned and needed emergency surgery in the middle of San's mother's forest had he needed so much time to recuperate. Shizune-sensei assured them that he was healing. Just slowly.

"Ichi said ishikari nabe for dinner," Temari said, catching his attention again.

Hotpot? Sounded good to Sasuke.

"Hey, Yorozoku," Shisui said, when the pack was sprawled around the library after breakfast a couple days later. His cheerful air had lost some of the manic, strained edge of the past few weeks. "Do you know what today is?"

Sasuke exchanged a confused look with Haku. Someone's birthday? No, it was December, and Sai and Hinata had November birthdays, and the next were Haku and Gaara in January. He snuck a quick glance at Zabuza-sensei leaning against a table at the back of the room with his arms crossed, the corded muscles bulging in his forearms. Zabuza-sensei narrowed his eyes at him, and he turned back to the front quickly.

"It's four days after Itachi and the captain left," Shisui announced, a cross between vindictive and relieved. "Your three days are up! Congratulations, your proper training starts now."

"Aww," Naruto groaned. "I didn't get to graffiti the Mizukage Tower yet!"

"And you won't," Shisui said with relish. In the back, Zabuza-sensei muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, What a fucking nightmare.

Sasuke thought that was just poor planning on Naruto's part and had no remorse. Temari'd made time to blow away not an entire lake, but at least a pretty good-sized pond, Sakura'd devoured a good section of the library, and Sasuke'd set a couple of bonfires - controlled, thanks - on their training ground. Haku picked up that rabbit, which was tucked in the sleeve of his haori. Hinata and Sai had combined their calligraphy and ink painting into sentinel wall hangings in their sleeping quarters that could be activated in case of an attack. Neji and Gaara had done...probably whatever Neji and Gaara had wanted to do. The fact that Naruto hadn't grabbed the chance to deface the Tower instead of random buildings in the Village was his problem.

"What do you mean, 'proper training?'" Sakura asked tentatively. Behind her, Gaara's heavily lidded eyes opened just a little more in interest.

"Well," said Shisui. "Practically since we met you, we taught the bare basics and then how to survive a war. Your training hasn't been very structured or consistent because we just taught you what you needed to stay alive at that moment in time. You're all missing some fundamentals and theory, so since we're moving towards peacetime, we're going to set up a regular learning and training schedule! That sounds fun, right?"

It sounded good...but suspicious. Shisui was enjoying himself a little too obviously, and when Temari looked around, he saw his mistrust reflected in her eyes. "That sounds good," Temari said slowly, clearly choosing to spring the trap.

"When do we begin?" asked Sai.

"Right now!" Shisui said. "Everyone take a sheet of paper and a pencil and have a seat at the table."

A moment of dead silence. "Book learning?" Naruto and Sakura demanded in unison, with entirely different levels of enthusiasm. Gaara scowled thunderously. Sasuke frowned. He knew why he needed that stuff. That didn't mean he had to like it.

"Book learning," Shisui agreed. "Some of you need to work on your writing. Some of you aren't at the level where you can read and understand a mission dossier or a map. All of you can improve your understanding of battle strategy and chakra theory, especially as you start to specialize in a particular jutsu. Paper, pencil, sit," he urged, when nobody moved, and Sasuke resigned himself to a long morning.

Sasuke expected that Zabuza-sensei would leave or do whatever he did as a captain, but instead, he stayed where he was with his own stack of papers, one eye on the pack and Shisui gathered cross-legged on the floor ringing the tables. He looked anticipatory.

"First, I'm going to test to see where you are individually," Shisui announced. "No cheating. It won't help anyone."

Naruto tried anyways.

There'd been no way to practice reading and writing when they were on the run or living with San and the wolves or in the middle of war, and honestly they'd had much more important things to worry about, like eating, or staying alive. Sasuke frowned at his misshapen kana and snuck a look at Sakura's and Neji's papers. Neji scowled and covered his paper. Sakura didn't, but looked distressed despite her annoyingly perfect script.

"Hmm," said Shisui with forced cheer as he collected their papers and gave each a very careful scrutiny. "I see we have a...wide variety of answers." Zabuza-sensei muffled a snicker in the background.

Sasuke caught a glimpse of what had to be Naruto's paper - he was pretty sure at least half the kana were backwards or had some embellishing curls or swirls, and he'd substituted words he didn't know with crude illustrations.

Then they moved on to mathematics, starting out with, 'What is seven plus nine?' which gradually progressed to, 'If Kenji has a hundred ryou and buys fourteen apples for six ryou each, then sells eight of them for eight ryou each, how many apples and how much ryou does he have?' and ended with, 'If a shinobi standing at the edge of an eighty meter cliff throws a two-point-three kilogram kunai horizontally off the edge on a windless day with an initial speed of sixty-five kilometers per hour, how far away will the kunai hit the ground?'

Sasuke's self-esteem might have taken a tiny hit, but everyone else was as clueless as he was by the time they got to the final question. Gaara was very deliberately marking an army of dots with his pencil, Naruto had doodled Shisui as a cartoon cat, and Hinata had frozen, staring down at her paper with blank eyes. Only Temari seemed to have the slightest idea of what to do with that one - her, Neji, and Sakura, who sketched some sort of halfhearted diagram before scribbling a number and a lot of question marks on her paper and giving up.

"It's okay!" Shisui told them as he shuffled their begrudgingly relinquished papers into a loose pile. "We're, we're just figuring out where we need work! Don't feel bad." He wasn't very reassuring.

Zabuza-sensei tossed a handful of dried seasoned kawahagi into his mouth like potato chips and crunched down loudly. It rapidly became apparent that he was sticking around solely to bask in Shisui's growing despair.

"Chakra theory," said Shisui a little desperately. "This one is fun, huh?"

It was not.

"Shinobi strategy and weaponry."

Don't get caught. Kill the other person before they killed you.

"Basic shinobi history?"

Clans fought each other. Clans made Villages. Villages fight each other. Was there more than that? Apparently so.

"Civilian and shinobi culture."

Sasuke could only name about a dozen gods, and seven of them because of the Kiri warships. And how was he supposed to know how many pieces there were to a formal court kimono?

"Geography of the Elemental Lands."

Suna: sand. Konoha: giant trees. Kiri: islands. Kumo: mountains. Iwa: ?

"Shinobi ranking and organization."

Okay, Sasuke knew a bit more about this one because of the whole war thing. Or was Hanabi-ha organized differently because they were technically all nuke-nin and not a proper Village? He scratched his temple absently and stole a glance at Sai, whose flow chart had turned into an elaborate web. Then he looked over at Neji, who was glaring intently at the five empty boxes he'd drawn on his paper, and Naruto, whose answer consisted of 'KAGE!' and 'ninja' and 'civilians' and not much else.

They all had odd patchworks of knowledge. Sakura, for example, could recap the transformations of the political climates of Nami, Kawa, and Tetsu for the past twenty years, but she hadn't known that the Sandaime Hokage was the student of the Shodaime and Nidaime Hokage. Hinata could tell you what was appropriate to wear for about fifteen different functions of varying formality but stuttered into silence when asked to explain the merits of a single versus a double bladed sword. Neji could do crazy math in his head but had literally no knowledge of anything before the founding of Konohagakure. Sai could draw a historically accurate reenactment of the battle leading up to the clash between the Yondaime Hokage, the Yondaime Raikage, and the Hachibi jinchuuriki, but couldn't name a single thing that a civilian might gift another for Ochugen or a birthday.

Sasuke had some weirdly specific knowledge about growing garden produce. Gaara knew an awful lot about countries with wet climates. Naruto could describe, if not name, the foods, drinks, and the spices preferred in each of the five Great Villages. Haku could list more than fifty gods, goddesses, or supernatural creatures and their dominions. Temari could recite the names of every known jinchuuriki ever for all nine of the bijuu.

But in conclusion: most of the nine of them knew a whole lot of nothing.

At the end of their 'pre-testing session', Temari, having more or less completed the full Academy curriculum in Suna, got drafted as assistant teacher for the stuff that she did know, and Haku to a lesser extent because he picked up some stuff as Zabuza-sensei's apprentice even if he never went to an actual Academy. Zabuza-sensei also got loudly and reluctantly drafted as a teacher teacher since he was a jounin and an adult and technically already their sensei, and Shisui didn't have time to teach everything himself even if he didn't sleep.

"That's cool, Juu-sensei, but can we go train now?" Temari asked.

Sasuke could not agree more.

"Yes, go, get out of here," Shisui said distractedly, not looking up from where he stared dejectedly at the stacks and stacks of pre-test answers.

Sasuke hopped up to join the pack scramble for the door. Nothing like a rousing afternoon of trying to maim each other after a long, boring morning.

Something was shaking. Sasuke's consciousness surfaced muzily, and he pried open his eyes in time to see Gaara finish wriggling his way out from the bottom of the puppy pile and scramble for the door, a barely-there shadow in the gloom of the dark. That was concerning. Gaara rarely moved faster than a slow crawl of his own volition.

"Oh gods, what time is it?" Sakura demanded, her voice rough with sleep as she hunched where she'd been unceremoniously shoved out of the way.

"Otouto?" Temari called softly with a note of wariness. No response.

The creak of the front door opening jarred them all to full alertness. Sasuke sat bolt upright as Sai jackknifed to his feet and Neji slapped a hand over Naruto's mouth.

"Suzaku on me," Temari hissed, barely louder than her breath. "The rest of you, stay quiet and be ready."

But Sasuke recognized that chakra, even compressed and folded down so neatly, and he pushed past her and Haku both and skidded into the doorway. Itachi looked up with a small smile from where he stood between Shisui and the captain, snow soaking into the shoulders of his cloak, and said, "Tadaima. It's good to see you, otouto."

"Okaeri," Sasuke's mouth replied for him, since he couldn't seem to move. "You're back."

"Oh, Taichou - Sensei!" Temari said, when she whirled around the corner after him and pulled up short, the rest of the pack piling into the doorway after her. Gaara glanced back at them smugly from his perch on one of the tables. She tucked her kunai away discreetly. "Welcome back."

"Hm. One more," said the captain vaguely, one hand still on the open door. A flash of fur big enough to be a wolf slipped through the gap, and he closed the door behind it.

"Urushi!" Naruto gasped, throwing himself forward because he physically could not not pet a relatively friendly dog when he saw one, ninken or not.

"As you were," the captain said when he saw them all still hovering. He stripped off his cloak and vanished into his sleeping quarters, where Zabuza greeted him with a groggily snarled, "Keep your godsdamned wet clothes on your own fucking side, Hatake."

Urushi's ears flattened at either the sudden bombardment of attention or the abandonment of his summoner, but he stood patiently where he was and allowed Naruto, and then Hinata, to coo over him.

Sasuke went over to tuck himself into his brother's side silently, and Itachi lifted an arm and draped it over Sasuke's shoulder carefully. His skin was cool to the touch, chilled by the wind and snow. "Are you not tired?" he asked, and Sasuke shook his head.

"How was the mainland, Sensei?" Temari asked.

"Terrible and exhausting," Shisui answered for him. "Oh wait - that was you kids."

"Sensei!" Sakura protested reproachfully.

Shisui levelled her with a droll stare. "How many acts of theft and vandalism were committed by persons in this room?" A sheepish silence. "Yeah, that's what I thought."

"Surely," said Itachi, "you could not mean to imply that these competent, responsible genin committed numerous crimes in a foreign Village."

Naruto wriggled in glee at being caught. Neji rubbed the edge of his jaw and became very interested in greeting Urushi with a careful pat. Temari's smirk flashed across her face, fleeting quicksilver.

"Oh yes," Shisui said dryly. "Criminals and aiders and abettors, all of them."

"But of course they cannot be considered criminals unless caught and charged guilty," Itachi concluded thoughtfully.

Shisui glared at him. "I hate you."

"Hate leads to suffering," countered Itachi. Then he stiffened ever so slightly and immediately relaxed, fast enough to be a flinch, and Sasuke glanced up to see his brother watching him back, his eyes shadowed with thoughtfulness and something else. Sasuke frowned a silent question, but Itachi patted his shoulder once reassuringly before returning his attention to the rest of the pack and Shisui.

"I don't think hatred is the reason I've been suffering," Shisui muttered, giving the pack a stink-eye.

Itachi hummed low in his throat, and it vibrated through his chest. "What is the reason, then?"

"Sensei's trying to teach us properly," Temari volunteered, hopping up to sit next to Gaara, who leaned into her.

"Most of us lack a formalized, classroom-based education," Sai added. "Juu-sensei and Zabuza-sensei have begun to remedy that during your absence."

"This causes suffering?" Itachi asked with polite disbelief.

"Yes," Shisui groaned as Naruto nodded empathetically.

"It's so boring!" Naruto whined.

"It's not so bad," Sakura defended. "It can be...a lot...but I like it!"

"Juu-sensei is struggling to organize lessons due to the disparity in knowledge between each of us," Neji explained.

"Yeah, the this parody," Naruto agreed.

Shisui rubbed at the edges of his eye. "I hope you realize you've been drafted as a teacher, cousin."

"I'm sure you understand I have many responsibilities, as a captain," Itachi deflected. "A significant amount of work must have accumulated while I was away."

Shisui's eye narrowed. Hinata stifled a giggle.

"However," Itachi continued magnanimously, "as you are greatly struggling and I cannot in good faith allow such 'suffering,' I will assist you."

"You're lucky you're my precious little cousin," Shisui grumbled. Urushi slithered out of Naruto's adoring grasp and padded over to nose at his hand consolingly.

Itachi said he was busy, and between his duties with his unit, Command, and teaching the pack, he was - but he still made time to steal Sasuke away like he had the days fresh after the war's official end and the Mizukage's death.

"Don't you have better things to do?" Sasuke asked, knowing the answer was yes but hoping it could be no.

"'Better', I would not say," Itachi answered, tucking his hands behind his back and leaning over the edge of the cliff to peer at the patchworks of training grounds far below. Maybe it was a Konoha thing, to like heights - Sasuke'd never seen the Kiri shinobi climb trees or mountains or even buildings just for the distance from the ground. "There is nothing urgent that I must attend to."

Sasuke scooted to the edge and sat, swinging his legs over the sheer drop. "What was it like, back there?" he asked abruptly. "Been a while since we left."

"Yu no Kuni is forever locked in spring," Itachi said, sinking down to sit next to him. "The air is crisp and the sun far away, but the heat yet rises from the ground. We passed through Yu briefly after leaving Tetsu, if you remember - the climate has not changed much."

"Yeah, I remember," said Sasuke, kicking his heels. "What did change?"

Itachi's face smoothed, blank and unreadable. "Konoha and Kumo wage their war through the lands between their own. Yu is one of those countries caught in the crossfire."

Good luck to Yu, then. They'd be lucky if anything was still standing once the two Great Villages were through with each other. "That's too bad," he managed to say.

"It is not a fate its people deserve," Itachi agreed with just a hint of bite. Sasuke chewed on his lip awkwardly. "Enough of that," Itachi said lightly, turning a small if worn smile on Sasuke. "I should also add that the captain and I were able to become reacquainted with cuisine not based in seafood."

Sasuke stifled an envious groan. "Everything here is finned," he grumbled vehemently. "There's only so much sashimi and steamed fish and fish stew we can make before it all starts tasting the same. Did you get steak?" he demanded. "Chicken? Pork that's not dried and salted?"

Itachi was watching him funny again, that strange mix of amusement and affection and something else that glinted in his eyes for a split second before vanishing. Nothing on his face betrayed him, even when Sasuke frowned and tilted his head up. "Yes," he said with an almost-smile. "All of those," and Sasuke bit back a Naruto-esque sigh of envy. "Let us go into town," Itachi suggested with a hint of a smile. "I will treat you something that is not seafood-based, though I cannot promise anything like steak. Does that sound amenable?"

Sasuke ducked his head and bit down on a smile. "Yeah, I guess," he said. "Curry?"

"I don't see why not," Itachi agreed.

They ended up in a proper restaurant, down the street from one of the stores the others had successfully burglarized, and Sasuke was self-conscious even with the cloth flaps that hung down to give their booth privacy. He took off his respirator only when their food had been delivered, steaming and savory to make Sasuke's mouth water.

Itachi watched him take the first bite indulgently. "How do you find it?"

"It's good," Sasuke said. "I think I'll try to make some for the others."

Itachi smiled slightly, dipping down into his own dish. "What are your plans, now that the Kiri Civil War is over? Experiment with cooking?"

Sasuke shrugged. "Yeah, I guess," he said. "And train. I figured I'd learn more of our clan's ninjutsu. More like the Goukakyuu." He snuck a glance up at Itachi to see his reaction.

"A good idea," Itachi agreed, pouring out tea for them both. "Is there anything else you wished to learn?"

Sasuke frowned. "Kenjutsu? And tactics and strategy of course." Should he be mentioning reading? Drawing battle maps?

"I see," said Itachi, perfectly neutral, but Sasuke still got the feeling he'd disappointed him.

"What about you?" Sasuke asked, pushing a bit of rice into the sauce on his place. "I mean, do you have things you want to do since the war's over?"

"I imagine my duties will continue to take up the majority of my time," said Itachi regretfully. "There is the transition to peacetime to coordinate, and plans for future steps to make. However, I would not decline the opportunity to spend time with you, otouto."

"Yeah," Sasuke said nonchalantly. "I guess I wouldn't mind either."

Shisui was always running to meetings or buried in paperwork these days, so Sasuke guessed he should be happy or at least grateful that his cousin took time out of his day to train them. And he was. Just. Taking notes on mathematical processes was mind-numbingly boring.

"Look," said Shisui, when it became clear that the attention of most of the pack was drifting. "This is stuff you're going to need in real life, it's not just messing around with numbers on a piece of paper."

Gaara looked unconvinced. Naruto looked lost. Sasuke fought the urge to yawn.

Shisui heaved a sigh and Sasuke kind of felt bad for being bored. "Let's say you're on a forced march," he said. "You're short on supplies. Say you've got a special sort of ration bar that's extremely potent but, maybe, only eleven out of seventeen of all shinobi are able to tolerate it. And of those shinobi, two out of seven will experience serious side effects, so you don't want to feed it to them either. If your unit has five hundred shinobi in it, how many of them will be able to eat the ration bars? First, - "

"Two hundred and thirty one," blurted Sakura, and promptly clapped her hands over her own mouth in mortification.

Shisui sighed. "Yes," he acknowledged wearily. "That is correct. Please explain how you solved that." Sakura squeaked something unintelligible muffled by her hands, and Shisui said, "That's fine. Ni-kun, you've learned this, haven't you?"

"Hai," said Neji warily.

"Why don't you explain it to everyone?" Shisui suggested. "I wouldn't want you all to get tired of me talking at you."

Temari traded an embarrassed look with Haku over the table.

"It is multiplication of the fractions," Neji said. "Multiply the numerators and denominators to - "

"Hold on," said Shisui, raising his hand. "What fractions? Where did you get fractions? Every step, please."

Neji's sunglasses did a lot to hide his aggravation. He took a careful breath. "The first fraction is the eleven out of seventeen shinobi who are able to tolerate the ration bar. Eleven over seventeen." He took another deep breath for patience. "The second fraction is the shinobi that will not experience side effects. Two out of seven will, so five out of seven will not. Five over seven. The numerators are then - "

"What are numberators?" interrupted Naruto, which was good because Sasuke didn't know what they were either.

Neji looked at Shisui for help. Shisui crossed his arms and didn't help. "Numerators are the numbers on top of the fractions," Neji said, after a long, blank moment where he tried to figure himself out. "Above the line. Denominators are the numbers below. Understand?"

"Uhh...yeah," said Naruto. "By why you gotta give them weird names?"

"So that you know which number we are referring to," explained Neji with remarkable patience. "We multiply the numerators of the two fractions. Do you know what that means?"

Naruto looked down at his notes for help, but they were chicken scratch and doodles and entirely illegible. "Uh," he said, and Hinata slid over her own perfectly neat notes. "It means...you count to eleven five times."

"And that is?" Neji prompted.

"Eleven, eleven, eleven, eleven, and eleven," said Naruto.

Neji opened his mouth, shut it silently again, and looked for the nearest hard surface to bash his head against.

Naruto cackled. "I gotcha!" he crowed. "It's fifty-five. I'm not that dumb!"

Sasuke huffed a laugh as Haku hid his in his sleeve. "Thank the gods," Shisui muttered under his breath, his face buried in his hand. "That was terrifying."

"Yes. Good," said Neji, rubbing his forehead between his eyebrows. "Fifty-five. Yes. And then multiply the denominators - "

Naruto interrupted, "The what?"

Neji tipped his head up towards the ceiling and sighed.

"Good stuff, you guys," said Shisui, once Neji had finished the entire torturous explanation a full thirty minutes later. "That's the kind of teaching and learning I expect from you all when I'm not around. No losing patience and no giving up, got that?"

"Hai," Sasuke chorused dutifully with the rest of the pack. Neji despaired silently.

"Great," said Shisui. "I have briefings lined up from now til midnight, so I'll be handing the rest of your lesson over to your Karasu-sensei," he said, nodding towards the far side of the room. "Be good for him, he's still getting back into the swing of things around here."

Itachi pushed off from the table he'd been leaning against from which to watch and gave Shisui a solemn nod. "Thank you," he said, as Shisui gave the pack a wave and ducked out the door, pack in hand and mask over his face. "Please have paper and a pencil to take notes, as the information we discuss today will be vital moving forward."

Ugh. More notes.

Sakura raised her hand. "What're you going to be teaching us, Karasu-sensei?"

"History," Itachi answered after a thoughtful pause. "We will briefly cover the relevant events in Konoha history that brought us to this point, and at a later lesson, we will go back to examine them with greater detail. We will begin with the Warring Clans Era."

Neji sank into stone-faced dismay. Gaara scowled. Naruto blurted out, "We're starting all the way back there?"

Sakura was the only one who was remotely happy with this, because everyone else was sane and realized that history was about as interesting as a bag of rocks. She was practically sparkling. Disgusting. "That's so much stuff!" she bubbled, blithely ignoring the daggers Sasuke stared in her direction. "We have to start back there, else nothing will make sense."

"Precisely," Itachi agreed, unruffled in the face of the overwhelming displeasure swamping the room. "Sasuke, please describe the founding of Konohagakure."

What a shinobi thing to do, to deflect the burden and the blame onto Sasuke. Sasuke glowered, and unwillingly ground out, "During the Warring Clans Era, the Uchiha and Senju Clans were the greatest and most evenly matched shinobi clans for hire in the region that'd become Hi no Kuni. Clan Head Uchiha Madara and his brother Izuna were rivals with Senju Hashirama and his brother Tobirama. After years of killing each other, the clans got tired of fighting and made an alliance instead. A bunch of other clans joined in and that's how Konohagakure started."

"Succinct, but ultimately accurate," Itachi observed. "Though it should be added that one of the casualties of the constant warring was Uchiha Izuna, and with his dying breath, he told Madara not to trust the peace the Seju were offering. Years after the founding of Konoha, after Hashirama was chosen as the first Hokage, Madara split with the Uchiha when they refused to leave with him, bent the Kyuubi to his will as a weapon, and fought Hashirama to destroy the village. He was ultimately defeated."

That...was something that should be added? Sasuke kind of considered it dirty Clan laundry. Nobody liked to talk about crazy old Grandpa Madara, or 'the venerable mad ancestor'. That was a story that the Uchiha would like nothing more than to bury forever.

"I know what happened there," Temari interjected, and Itachi inclined his head to her. "When the Shodaime Hokage freed the Kyuubi from Madara's control, his wife Uzumaki Mito subdued it and sealed it into herself, and became the first jinchuuriki not only of the Kyuubi, but of any of the nine bijuu."

Sasuke's and Sakura's eyes met and in unison flashed to Naruto, who looked lost for a moment before realization struck and he shot bolt upright. "Uzumaki?" he yowled. "Like me? Is she my grandma? Am I like, the Shodaime Hokage's, like, great-great-great-great grandkid or something?"

Temari's eyes widened. "You're an Uzumaki?" she demanded. "Why are you blond?" The way she said it sounded a lot like, Why are you dumb? Which was kind of loaded, considering she was blonde too.

"He is related to the Shodaime?" Neji asked over Naruto's yelps of offense, eyes narrowed and calculating.

"No," said Itachi crushingly. "Yes, Naruto is descended from the same clan as Uzumaki Mito. However, he is not related to the Shodaime Hokage in any manner that I know of."

Naruto wilted a little, but he was still vibrating because the captain said he knew Naruto's parents but refused to tell him much and now he knew he came from a clan, which Sasuke unfortunately could tell was different from his I really really have to pee vibrating due to repeated exposure to the latter. He'd be talking about it nonstep for the next four months unless some other, more interesting tidbit dropped.

"Karasu-sensei, as clan leadership is often hereditary, are you and Shi descendants of Uchiha Madara?" Sai asked.

Oh no. Sasuke let his head drop to the table to wallow in his gloom and regretted. Through his eyelashes, he could see Itachi's face blank in a way that would be a grimace on anyone else. "That...is possible," his brother allowed. Naruto gasped gleefully. Gaara turned to examine Sasuke curiously, mirrored by Sai.

"And then the Shodaime died," Sasuke added quickly, before anyone could ask if he was going to go insane too.

"The Shodaime did die," Itachi agreed, "but not before he and his brother, who would become the Nidaime, took a group of promising young shinobi under their tutelage. The Nidaime later sacrificed himself during a mission in the First Shinobi War, before which he famously named one of his students, Sarutobi Hiruzen, as his Successor over another student, Shimura Danzo."

The name drew a round of hisses from the crowd, Sasuke included. Boo. Loser. Sore loser.

"The Sandaime Hokage led Konoha through the rest of the First and the Second Shinobi Wars. In the latter, some of Konoha's shinobi gained great renown - including Orochimaru, Jiraiya, Senju Tsunade, and Hatake Sakumo."

"The White Fang," Gaara said suddenly, reminding them all that he and Temari had grown up on the opposite side of the battlefield from the Konoha crew.

Temari tangled her fingers in his hair. "Yeah, we've heard of him," she agreed wryly. "The captain's father."

"None of them remained heros for long," Itachi continued, and the barely-there noise from rustling clothes stopped abruptly as the pack stilled. "Jiraiya abandoned the war effort for some time before returning, though he did not stay long before he left again, ostensibly to build an intelligence network. Senju Tsunade lost her lover in the war, then her brother, and she too left Konoha. Orochimaru defected after years of unsanctioned human experimentation, after he was passed over for the position of Yondaime Hokage. Hatake Sakumo failed a mission that contributed to the onset of the Third Shinobi War, became the most hated shinobi in the Village and consequently took his own life when his son was six years old."

Sasuke was definitely not comfortable with hearing about this - this was the captain's personal life more than it was Konohan history. He checked over his shoulder reflexively to make sure the captain wasn't in his room, and caught Haku's eyes when he did the same. Haku grimaced, a flicker of uneasiness mirrored in Sakura's face and amplified in Hinata's.

Itachi was oblivious or more likely ignoring them and he would not stop. "Namikaze Minato rose to fame in the Third Shinobi War as the Yellow Flash and was named the Yondaime Hokage. He reigned for just a few short years before the Kyuubi's second jinchuuriki lost control of the bijuu, and he died resealing it into Naruto."

Temari didn't volunteer the second jinchuuriki's name. Sasuke didn't blame her.

"Danzo built up a secret sector of Anbu under his own command. After the death of the Yondaime Hokage, the Sandaime resumed the position; Danzo attempted to assassinate him - and his chosen assassin was Hatake Kakashi, student of the Yondaime."

"What?" Sasuke blurted, in unison with Sakura and Temari.

"Quit messin' with us!" Naruto demanded, but none of them really believed that Itachi was lying.

There was that something in Itachi's expression again, something hard and cold and unfamiliar, and this was feeling less and less like a history lesson and more and more like a trap. "Kakashi-taichou decided not to follow those orders and reported to the Sandaime instead. Sandaime-sama ordered Danzo to shut down his faction. He did not; he merely subsided to wait for an opportunity." His words were clipped, precise. Sai, who always needed to make a real effort to show any emotion, was discomfited enough that he'd forgotten entirely about facial expressions. "The Uchiha Clan had been marginalized after the death of the Yondaime due to Madara's ability to control the Bijuu and suspicions of their involvement in the Kyuubi attack. The Uchiha fostered discontent for many years and ultimately planned a revolt to take over the Village."

Hinata glanced at Neji, her mouth set in a grim line. Haku had gone preternaturally still. Sakura shot a panicked look at Sasuke.

"What?" Sasuke croaked.

Itachi eyes drifted to his dispassionately. "The Uchiha wanted more, and were willing to start a war to attain it. Danzo was convinced that the best course of action would be to eliminate the clan entirely before an attack could happen." He paused. "I was assigned to this mission, but unlike Kakashi-taichou, I did not question my orders. I carried them out."

The orders: eliminate the clan. Itachi -

Carried.

Them.

Out.

Sasuke didn't hear anything after that. There was a strange, high pitched whine cutting through the Itachi's words, words Sasuke couldn't make out, and only when the rest of the pack shot him wide-eyed looks out of the corners of their eyes did Sasuke realize it was him, keening over and over uncontrollably.

"Sensei," Temari spoke up bravely, pulling back her shoulders like she was facing down a threat and glancing towards the door. "Maybe we should - "

"I am not finished," Itachi cut her off, pinning her in place with his eyes and ratcheting up the tension to unbearable heights. He transferred the almost-glare to Gaara when he shifted in place on the verge of wary and agitated, his sand stirring as it responded to his distress.

"You couldn't have killed all the Uchiha," Sasuke said abruptly, his heartbeat roaring in his ears. "I'm still alive." The second the words left his mouth he knew it was a mistake, a weak reason, grasping at straws because no matter what happened Itachi never lied to him.

"If that mission had gone according to plan, you would have been the only survivor," Itachi countered.

"Cousin Risuke came to get me from the Academy yard, to take me away when the Kumo forces attacked," Sasuke argued, desperately ignoring the frigid paralysis creeping its way along his spine. "Everyone was still fine, or else he would have seen. He would have known!"

"No, you were not with Risuke-juukei," Itachi replied, as unmoving and cold as ice, "because I killed Uchiha Risuke twelve minutes before the Sandaime's assassination, eleven minutes before the order to initiate Protocol 73I, and ten minutes before the apparent Kumo incursion. You likely encountered an undercover operative with orders to remove you from the battlezone, per the parameters of my mission."

Sasuke wanted to yell, to throw something at him, shout, Why would you joke about something like this? Do you even care that they're dead? This was Itachi, the perfect shinobi, the perfect son, the perfect brother, and right now Sasuke looked in his eyes and didn't recognize who he saw. Sasuke's traitorous mouth said for him, "Why? Is this some kind of sick joke to you? A test?"

Naruto was scooting away from the table, Sakura inching towards Sasuke, and they flanked him like they did when they were facing an enemy, because - because Itachi was staring them down like they were nothing, like Sasuke was nothing, like he hadn't saved him, trained him, like they didn't share a home, share blood, share parents. Like he wasn't Itachi's own brother.

Parents…

That he killed?

Sasuke was almost dizzy with the possibility. His vision sharpened and blurred at once, the room sliding in and out of focus. Gaara's sand was hissing in earnest now, murderous intent warring with open uncertainty on his face. Hinata was still as a stone, and Temari's expression had shut down as her eyes tracked Itachi.

"This is not a test," Itachi said evenly, his gaze skating over them all dispassionately. "Those were the orders given to me by a commanding officer; these are facts. They may not be facts you are comfortable hearing, but as shinobi you have no choice but to confront them." He sighed, a slight rise and fall of his shoulders, ignoring the way the entire pack stiffened at the motion. "I will conclude the lesson here for today, as I have duties I must attend to. You may self-study the history of Kirigakure from the books here for the remainder of the evening."

And like he'd finished any old history lesson - like he hadn't just flipped Sasuke's world upside-down, like he hadn't just confessed to killing their entire family - he stood, hooked his mask over his face, and walked out the door.

Sasuke -

Sasuke couldn't breathe.

"What the hell was that?" Temari demanded, sharp but low.

"H-h-he k-killed the e-entire c-clan?" Hinata whispered, Kyuu's calm fleeing her control now that Itachi was gone.

"He was following orders," Sai said slowly, like his thoughts were moving too fast to comprehend.

"Danzo's orders," Neji spoke up, the corners of his mouth pinched in a frown. "He was following Danzo's orders."

"Does the captain know about this?" Sakura's voice was shrill. "He can't - if he did, he wouldn't - "

Wouldn't what? Wouldn't trust the Anbu who admitted to working for the usurper right up to the moment the Fall began? Let a Clan-killer serve with him when Hanabi-ha was delicate and hunted and short of good leaders? Ignore Itachi's crimes because of his talent and his skills?

Wouldn't he?

Naruto was watching him, eyes wide and worried, and for once he had no words at all.

"We must decide our next course of action," Neji said, head tipping a little towards first Hinata and then Sasuke, and Sai turned the same look on Naruto. The two older boys hadn't ever forgotten their original assigned missions to keep the three of them alive, but they'd stepped back a little when Hana-ha picked them up. They were supposed to be with allies here - for Sasuke, with family. They were supposed to be safe.

"I can get us clear of Kirigakure with Choujuu Giga, if necessary," Sai said with obvious reluctance. "The primary concern we need to address is whether we are safe if we stay here." His eyes shifted to Haku, calculating.

Because Haku wasn't like the rest of them; he was Zabuza's first. If the rest of them ran, he wouldn't follow.

Haku didn't acknowledge the scrutiny, continuing to stare contemplatively at the door through which Itachi had vanished. "I might be able to cover for you for a while, if it comes to it," he offered quietly.

Sasuke abruptly realized his Sharingan was active and shut it down, and the room swam back into fuzzy focus as the extra chakra surged back into his system. He couldn't think. He needed to think. He took a breath that shook, folded everything down neatly like he had when he was bleeding out in the hold of the warship, and settled into the sudden silence of his mind.

"...Karasu-sensei hasn't made any indication that he wants to hurt us," Temari was pointing out. "He's had years of opportunity. And we're not likely to be any safer on our own on the mainland."

"Why would he just tell us this now?" Sakura said. "What's he getting out of this? Why hasn't anyone else told us about this?"

"It...never came up," Sasuke rasped, biting down the hysterical laughter. Hey, little brother, just thought I might inform you - remember how our entire clan died during the Fall? In actuality, they died right before the Fall because they were planning to take over the Village and I killed them all. He'd said it so emotionlessly, like it was any old mission and not his own parents, his aunts and uncles and cousins whose blood he spilled in the streets of their own compound.

Did he even care that he killed them?

"We need to decide," Temari said doggedly before Sasuke could lose his mind completely. "With Hanabi-ha and Kirigakure. Do we go or do we stay?"

"Go," Sakura said immediately, her voice wavering. "He has to have an ulterior motive, even if we don't know what it is yet. I don't want to get caught up in that."

"Stay," voted Naruto. "Sensei saved us in Iwa, and he didn't have to. He taught us and protected us and I don't think he wants to hurt us."

"Go," Neji said firmly. "Just because he has declined the opportunity in the past does not guarantee he will continue to."

"S-stay," countered Hinata. "W-hat he t-told us is t-t-terrible, but h-his m-motive might n-not be m-malicious."

There was a pause. Temari chewed her lip. "I think we should go," she admitted. "At least for a little. Regroup somewhere neutral until we can figure things out."

"I don't know if I get a vote here," said Haku, "but I think you should stay. Winters in Kiri are unforgiving if you strike out alone, and I for one will do my best not to let anything happen to you here." Which was both a lot and not very much.

"Go," said Gaara simply.

"Stay," Sai countered. "I agree that fleeing now will cut us off from a number of resources. Strategically, leaving now will make us unprotected targets hunted by multiple military forces."

The room fell silent again, and Sasuke felt the pack's eyes all turn to him. "Sasuke," Sakura said almost gently, the first time she had used his real name in months. "Sasuke, it's four to four. It's down to your vote."

Sasuke's hands should have been shaking. He should be hyperventilating, he should be near tears, he should be feeling something. Anything. But his hands were rock steady and so was his heart when he said, "We should go."

Packing was hurried and efficient but not panicked - rusty, but well practiced. Temari cracked the front door open, enough to disrupt the seals so Hinata and Neji could see anyone coming, and they all retreated to the pack sleeping quarters to gather their things while Haku ran out to get them travel provisions. They all kept and replenished emergency stashes of food, had since the very beginning and never lost the habit, but not enough for striking out on their own in the middle of winter.

Sasuke packed the new clothes Temari and Naruto and Gaara'd stolen, the extra weapons and holsters he stockpiled, a handful of ration bars and bundles of dried meat, his bone-knife and his katana in its sheath, coils of cord and wire, a gas lighter and a folded handheld lantern. He swung his fur cloak over his shoulders, tucked the bone-mask on over his respirator, and stood.

Temari was still packing, throwing more supplies in her bag because she was stronger and could carry more: whetstones and hair dyes and makeup and extra colored contacts, full canteens and dry rations and a small bottle of shochu as disinfectant, fishhooks and water purification tablets and hygiene kits.

A massive flare of chakra erupted in the distance, and Sasuke's head snapped around towards it, the rest of the pack following suit like pointer hounds.

"Ni?" Temari said sharply, a hand reaching for the massive tessen leaning against the wall.

"The source is out of my range," Neji said, taking off his sunglasses and blinking rapidly, "but it was a large and intense burst. My vision will be restricted for approximately two minutes."

"Same," said Hinata, going back to her packing with no indication of her sudden loss of sight. She took her twin hiogi from her travel pack and tucked them in her belt instead, under her cloak.

"Keep going," Temari said, her voice grim. "Two minutes to departure, assuming Haku gets back before then. Hachi, prep your birds. Ni and Go-chan, plot our course out of here since you're done packing."

Haku whirled back through the door with a sack of provisions in hand, a harried crack in his composure. "There's something going on out there, I'm not sure what, but - " Another wave of chakra rose and crashed, and he stopped abruptly, ducking like there was a physical attack to dodge.

Shisui slammed through the front door and Sasuke flinched violently, the rest of the pack startling into crouches, hands on weapons. "All of you need to stay here, keep the door shut," his cousin ordered, ignoring their obviously half-packed state, Sai's unfinished ink-creature taking shape on the scroll sprawled on the floor, the cloaks and the masks that were a dead giveaway that they intended to run. "Hachi, take this - " he shoved a slip of inked paper into Sai's startled hands, who was closest. "That's a security seal. Activate it after I leave, stay here, and don't let anyone in until I give you the all-clear. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," Sai said reflexively. "What - "

"No time," Shisui snapped, and this time Sasuke recognized the chakra that surged. Shisui's head whipped towards the door, and Sasuke caught a flicker of worry? Fear? Without another word, Shisui blew back out the door in a blaze of chakra, and it slammed shut behind him.

"That was Itachi," Sasuke rasped into the stunned silence. "That chakra, it was Itachi's."

"Change of plan," Temari said. "Hachi, put that seal up. Everyone else, be on your guard. We're staying put."

They waited. The seals kept out chakra well, but sound less so. A faint, haunting howl split the air as they perched around the edges of the main library room, and that was followed by the barely-audible shriek of a high-powered raiton. Sasuke sat cross-legged with his hands on the katana balanced across his knees and ignored the glances the rest of the pack traded.

The ground rumbled once, then again ten minutes later, the second time hard enough to jar some of the books right off their shelves. They tumbled to the floor and were ignored.

When an hour of silence had passed, Haku distributed some of the rapid-ready ration meals he'd pilfered from the mess - bars of peanut butter encased in cornmeal coatings, strips of fruit leather, cubes of dried meat and potato.

A rattle of the door handle and then rough banging on the door made them all jump after maybe four hours of quiet. Temari had her tessen half-unfurled, Hinata's hiogi all the way, and Sakura had a kunai in each hand. Sai's hands hovered over his scroll, Sasuke's over the hilt of his katana, and Neji drew his tanto in a backhanded grip.

"Hey, brats," growled Zabuza-sensei through the door. "You put up an extra seal in there? This shit's not opening."

Haku rose for the door. Temari made an aborted lunge for him, but Haku got there first. "Zabuza-san, Juu-san instructed us not to open the seal until he returned," he said apologetically, and Temari sank back down warily.

"Yeah, Konoha's down for the count," Zabuza-sensei said, a bite of anger cutting through the weariness in his voice. "Open the door, kid."

Haku hesitated, glancing over his shoulder. Temari set her mouth and nodded. "Zabuza-san, what did you say to me when we first met?"

A pause, "What, about your eyes?"

Haku brushed his chakra through the seal and opened the door.

"Sensei, what happened?" Temari asked as Haku stepped aside to let Zabuza-sensei in.

Zabuza-sensei eyed her, then the rest of the room as Haku shut the door behind them. "Going somewhere?" He didn't wait for a response. "A lot of shit went down. You're all gonna have to hunker down here for the time being."

"Zabuza-san," Haku said, concern creasing his eyes. Sasuke took a closer look - Zabuza was unsteady on his feet, the beginnings of a hearty bruise peeking out from under his collar. His hair was damp, and he smelled of antiseptic and smoke. "Please. What happened?"

Zabuza-sensei slumped against the nearest table as the pack watched warily, and dragged a gloved hand down his face. "Fuck," he muttered to himself. "Fucking...fuck." He visibly pulled himself together, bracing his hands against the edge of the table, and looked them over before his eyes landed on Sasuke.

Sasuke felt the blood drain from his face.

"Itachi went batshit," Zabuza-sensei said mercilessly. "He and fucking Makoto - you don't know him, he's the head of Mei's bodyguard team - they up and tried to kidnap the new Sanbi jinchuuriki."

Sasuke stopped breathing.

"Hatake caught them. Held them down til backup got there, but the fucking fool held back. Itachi put him in a coma - he's not waking up."

No. He wouldn't. Not the captain, Itachi respected him so much.

"Makoto's dead; Higata got him good. Itachi split without the jinchuuriki when Senju showed up, but Konoha's - Konoha's not doin' too great either. Lost a lotta blood and got a whole rack of cracked ribs. He's in Medical, Shizune's working on him while Senju does Hatake."

Sasuke hurt. His chest was killing him, his throat too swelled up for him to breathe, and he clawed uselessly at the collar of his shirt. This wasn't real. It couldn't be, this was, this had to be training, he got caught in a genjutsu and he just needed to break out. He was keening again, he realized, and Zabuza-sensei was staring at him with confusion and alarm.

"Oh, fuck," Zabuza-sensei said, leaning forward like he wanted to go to Sasuke but not sure what to do. "Fuck, what's wrong with him?" His words faded in and out of Sasuke's hearing. "Shit! Punk, dollface, go fetch fucking - what's-her-name, the medic-nin - Kuri. Now!"

Sai and Neji bolted from the room on the edges of Sasuke's awareness, and he clutched the sides of his head and pressed hard like that might make everything stop. Zabuza-sensei was suddenly in front of him, trapping either of his wrists in an iron grip and forcing them down. "Hey, none of that," he said gruffly. "Quit, if you know what's good for you. Step back," he snarled over his shoulder at Sakura and Naruto, hovering behind him with concerned etched in their faces. "Give him some fucking room to breathe."

Ha. Breathe.

How the hell was Sasuke supposed to breathe?

Sasuke woke up with dread sitting in a pit in his stomach and he didn't know why. He blinked as his vision blurred and turned his head to the side to see Shisui slumped in the chair next to his - his Medical pallet? His cousin's face was pale and drawn, shadows drawn in dark circles around his eyes. Bandages wrapped his torso under his loose yukata, and clear tubing snaked blood into his arm from the bag that hung on the wall above Sasuke's pallet.

He was asleep, but as Sasuke watched, his eyelashes fluttered and he stirred, awareness flickering back into his eye. "Shi-kun," he grated out, and tilted his face away and coughed a horrible, hacking cough that wracked his body in tremors.

Itachi. Itachi did that to him, Sasuke realized apathetically. He felt...he didn't feel anything about that because the world had gone blessedly, horribly numb and he didn't even care. "Are you okay?" he asked Shisui listlessly.

Shisui huffed an incredulous laugh and stifled another cough. "I'm fine. You collapsed," he added, and shuffled his chair closer to Sasuke's side. Sasuke turned back to face the ceiling.

"Is he gone?" he asked.

Shisui was silent, but Sasuke could feel the trickle of anguish in his chakra. "Yeah," he said. "He's gone."

"Oh," said Sasuke, and closed his eyes again.

In a bizarre turn of events, Zabuza-sensei was sacked out in the chair the next time Sasuke woke up. He blinked, uncomprehending, and tried to climb out of bed.

There was an unexpected needle in his arm that had been pumping something clear into his veins, and it ripped itself out and sent the bag with the fluid crashing to the ground, which disoriented Sasuke as he tripped out of the bed. Zabuza-sensei caught him by the arm before he hit the ground and scowled at him. "Th' fuck d'you think you're doing?" he muttered, heaving him back up with very little effort.

Sasuke thought about that, but it was bizarrely difficult because his mind was foggy and sluggish. "Training," he decided.

Zabuza-sensei snorted. "Yeah, no."

That was...fair. Sasuke didn't know why, though. "Where's..?" Where was...who?

"Konoha's back at base camp, recovering," Zabuza-sensei answered when he trailed off. "Hatake's still in a coma."

Sasuke squinted at him. "Why - ?"

Zabuza-sensei must have gained psychic powers while Sasuke was sleeping, because he said, "Konoha didn't wanna leave you alone. Wouldn't leave here til I told him I'd stay." He rolled his eyes dramatically. "Plus, I'm ducking the shitstorm of Konoha and Kiri Commands. They're all pissed."

Oh. Sasuke considered this. "Can I go back to camp?"

Zabuza surveyed him with narrowed eyes and shrugged. "Fuck it, I don't see why not. Sit tight, let me find a medic-nin to clear you or they'll be on our asses from dawn to dusk." He stumped out of the room, and as Sasuke sat up, he saw the bulge of Kubikiribocho under his cloak.

Sasuke rubbed at the place where the needle had come out of his arm, pinching to watch the blood bead up, letting go and watching it spread and slide down his skin.

"Ah, a bit too eager to get out of here?" said a voice, but the woman's face was neutral despite the concern in her voice. She reached out, and Sasuke let her take his arm and draw a green-glowing finger over the break in his skin. It closed without a whisper, and Kuri wiped away the blood briskly with a clean cloth. She rested a hand on Sasuke's head, careful but impersonal, and her eyes lidded as warm chakra washed over him. She opened her eyes again and the green glow faded. "You're good to go," she said. "Come back if you feel dizzy, faint, or experience changes in hearing or vision."

Sasuke nodded. Zabuza-sensei, leaning in the doorway, stepped through to let her out. "All right, boy," he said. "Mask on, let's roll."

The entire pack was sprawled or perched in the main room of the library, books and paper or weapons and cleaning cloth laid out in front of them, and they all looked up when Sasuke stepped into the room.

"Shi!" Naruto whisper-yelled, which was everyone else's normal talking voice. "You're back!"

They very deliberately weren't crowding him. Sakura grabbed Naruto's arm when he tried to lunge, dragging him back.

"Shi-kun," Temari said, carefully, like she was approaching a feral cat. "It's good to see you."

Sasuke shrugged a shoulder. "Thanks," he said, and went over to sit with Hinata and Haku.

"Are you okay?" asked Haku, hushed enough that only they three could hear.

Sasuke thought about it. "I'm fine," he said, reaching over to pull one of the textbooks closer to him.

And he was.

Sasuke drifted.

Life moved on. Itachi was gone and he left Sasuke behind after bringing his entire world crashing down, but the sun still rose every day and Sasuke hated it a little for that.

But he ate at meals and took notes when Shisui lectured on anatomy and clan etiquette between coughing spells and sparred and drilled with his team on the training grounds. The pack made no more mention of leaving Kirigakure, and Zabuza-sensei and Shisui never brought up their interrupted attempt either.

The Konoha and Kiri delegations settled back into their uneasy alliance after the double betrayal. Temari and Haku led pack training exercises more often than not now, since Shisui and Zabuza-sensei were frequently absent, trying to fill the gaps left by Itachi and the comatose captain.

"I'm surprised they never moved him to the hospital," Shisui said during a rare dinner where all - all eleven of them, now - were gathered together. "Hana-ha's medical ward is only really supposed to support short-term injuries."

Zabuza rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I'm not. The hospital's shit. The death rate's so high the in-building morgue's always overcrowded. There's a private morgue down the street that sends 'em gift baskets on the holidays because they get so many bodies from the overflow."

"Ah," said Shisui after an appalled pause. "So that's why Tsunade-sama really doesn't want her medic-nin in there."

"But why not?" Sakura piped up. "If they need a lot of help, shouldn't we give it to them?"

"That's sweet of you, Go-chan," said Shisui, ignoring the way Zabuza raised a sardonic eyebrow. "But our iryou-nin are already under a lot of stress and our medical ward's very understaffed. Adding on that kind of environment isn't healthy." He saw Sakura's expression and relented. "Tsunade-sama is willing to help, just on her own terms and without endangering the medics."

"I-is the c-captain getting b-better, t-though?" Hinata asked timidly. "I-I mean, a-almost t-two w-weeks have p-passed s-s-since…" she trailed off.

"Tsunade-sama has been working on him a little bit every day," Shisui said, his voice light. "She's optimistic, but she's never dealt with damage from a - a genjutsu that severe. She thinks he'll wake soon."

The door opened just as he finished the sentence. The entire pack ducked at once. Shisui's leopard-mask appeared on his face in a blink as Sasuke dove automatically for his own mask, nearly crashing into Sai as he did the same.

"Maa," said the captain, shutting the door behind him, tall and not-quite leaning on the hound at his side but still carrying himself with confidence. "My ears were burning."

Shisui was instantly on his feet, hooking his mask up to the top of his head. "Taichou! You're awake!"

"Apparently," the captain agreed, dropping a hand to Urushi's shoulder for support as he lowered himself to sit.

"Are you even cleared to leave Medical?" Shisui demanded suspiciously.

"I'm on leave," the captain not-answered.

Zabuza hooked an extra bowl over to him with his chopsticks but otherwise didn't acknowledge him.

Temari breathed a silent sigh of relief. Sasuke lowered his mask slowly to his belt and picked up his bowl again.

That was one more piece back in place.

Sasuke's world turned a little differently now. In the morning, when Sasuke padded alongside Naruto into the main room, only half-listening to his chatter, the captain was leaning up against one of the tables, a handful of reports in one hand and a stack beside him. Urushi was curled under the table, his great muzzle resting on his forelegs and golden eyes watching the room alertly. Haku's rabbit was tucked between his chest and his neck, apparently asleep.

Sasuke ducked his head in a greeting, reaching over to grip the back of Naruto's head to force him to do the same. Naruto let him do it without complaint, the stream of words coming from his mouth not even faltering. He didn't expect a response beyond a silent wave, but the captain said, "Good morning," as casual as anything.

Sasuke froze. Naruto shut his mouth with a clack. "Uh," said Naruto intelligently. They both glanced at the captain furtively.

"Do you mind getting the others?" the captain asked, scribbling on the top page of his report and setting it down on the table next to him. He glanced up and gave them a reassuring eye-crinkle.

Was that...an order? That sounded like an order. "Yes, sir," said Sasuke, and turned on his heel, leaving Naruto gaping behind him.

Gaara was awake, swinging his heels on Hinata's bunk next to her, but most everyone else was still asleep. The two of them watched him curiously as he came back in. Sasuke jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Taichou wants us all outside," he said.

Gaara's eyes widened in curiosity, and his exchanged a glance with Hinata's covered eyes. Gaara reached around and down to pat at Temari's ankle and she came awake with a sharp intake of breath and sat up. "Otouto?"

"Captain," Gaara explained. "Wants us all outside."

Temari muffled a groan, sliding out of her bunk. "Hey!" she called, clapping her hands once. "Front and center, everyone, we've been summoned."

Sakura growled her way free of her blankets, and Haku tipped himself out of his bunk to land on the floor lightly. "This is unusual," he observed, as Neji emerged rumpled, the bandana on his forehead askew to reveal the edges of the seal on his forehead before he pulled it down again.

"Is it Zabuza-sensei?" Sakura asked, glowering at the room at large.

"It's the captain," Sasuke answered.

Neji straightened his shirt self-consciously and ran a hand through his hair. "We should not keep him waiting."

The captain hadn't moved in the few minutes Sasuke'd been gone, but Naruto was now crouched by the table next to him, one hand buried in Urushi's thick pelt as ninken and summoner alike ignored him. "Ah," said the captain as they all filed in, as if mildly surprised at their appearance. "Good morning." He received more or less the same response as when he'd tried that on Sasuke and Naruto - confusion and mumbled greetings, plus a coherent, "Good morning," from Haku.

"I'll cut to the chase," the captain said, setting the rest of his paperwork to the side. "There's going to be a couple changes from now on - for one, I'll be adding myself to your teaching rotation, because Shisui and Zabuza don't have the time or energy to do it all themselves." And because your third sensei defected and therefore will no longer be teaching. "I have at least a week of medical leave. I'll use part of that to revamp your training schedule - I understand Shisui started organizing one before it was disrupted."

"Hai," Temari agreed, lifting her chin a little. "We're self-studying where we can."

The captain nodded absent acknowledgement. "All of you," he said. "It's time to think of what you want to specialize in. You aren't going to have a lot of supervised training, so having a focus will be especially important. If you were Shirei-bu genin teams in Konoha, you'd have a jounin sensei for eight hours a day, five days a week. Given the nature of the situation, it will be rare that you have four hours a day of direct instruction from myself, Shisui, or Zabuza. The rest will be up to you."

That was fine. The pack was good with keeping up their own training.

Sakura put up her hand. "Are you really going to teach us what we want to learn?"

"What we teach you will be a combination of your own personal preference and concentrations we feel are vital for you to know," the captain answered easily. "I want a list of your opinions by tonight - and don't write it based on what skills you think we know or just what you already know, but what skills you want to learn. By tomorrow morning, I'll discuss with your other sensei and announce the schedule."

"I'm gonna go for ninjutsu," Naruto said, a gleam in his eye, when the captain had sort of released them to do their own thing. "Super strong ninjutsu, like the Raijuu! What 'bout you, Shi?"

"Kenjutsu," Sasuke said after a pause. "Maybe genjutsu, maybe ninjutsu. I don't know." Those were Itachi things, but Sasuke couldn't think of anything else he'd want to do. That now-familiar wave of grief and panic rose, and so Sasuke locked away his Itachi thoughts and brought his breathing back under control between one breath and the next.

"I'm going to put down iryojutsu," Sakura announced. "So I can patch you losers up when you're being idiots. Not that you'd be an idiot, Shi-kun," she added sweetly.

Naruto sputtered, outraged. "What's that supposed to mean, Gogo-chan, huh?"

"Think this goes for book learning too?" he added absently, ignoring the brewing fight at his back.

"'This', what?" Sakura asked, momentarily derailed from needling Naruto.

"Do we pick a subject we like?" He smoothed down the cover of the old geography textbook on the desk next to him. He didn't think much of geography, but something like chakra theory? He could see himself spending extra time on something important like that.

"He didn't specify," Sakura noted. "Maybe pick a couple just in case. I'd pick anatomy, but maybe that's already a little too similar to iryojutsu?"

Naruto dropped his head to the table with a clunk, muffling his groan. "I don't wanna read books," he complained. "Can't we just learn how to hit people?"

Sasuke snorted. "How're you going to read mission orders if you can't even read?" Sakura pointed out. "Or write them?"

"Can't you just do it for me?" Naruto whined halfheartedly, rolling his head to the side to eye the textbook balefully. Sakura laughed at him.

"Shi," the captain said in a way that was probably supposed to be casual but still got the entire pack to look his way. He tipped his head over towards the kitchenette.

"Be right back," Sasuke muttered.

Sakura made a skeptical noise but waved him on, catching Naruto with a hand over his mouth with ease before the questions could start spilling out.

Sasuke preceded the captain into the kitchenette, retreating as far back as he could go and leaning up with his back against the sink. The captain closed the door behind him and Sasuke stiffened instinctively before forcing himself to relax again. A seal papered against the back of the door lit up with a brush of chakra, and the captain turned to look at him, slouched against the fridge with his hands in his pockets.

Sasuke recognized the way the captain was looking at him - wariness and calculation mixed with familiarity and regret. Shisui looked at him like that too, now, before he caught himself. "I remind you of him," Sasuke accused, too tired to be anything but blunt.

The captain didn't react at first, one dark eye fixed on Sasuke's face until Sasuke scowled. "Yes," the captain said, and that felt like a condemnation "You do." He exhaled a silent sigh. "You're almost the same age he was when he first joined my Anbu team."

Sasuke didn't speak. There was nothing for him to say. His fist had clenched; forcibly, he pried his fingers apart and let it go limp.

"I trusted him, even though I've been betrayed before," the captain admitted, and the words twisted a little at Sasuke's throat, like Sasuke'd been the one to do it and not Itachi. "I wanted to trust him, but - " he paused wryly. "Well, that didn't matter, in the end." He turned away, towards the treeline. "You're not him. You're your own person, and I'll try to remember that."

Empty words. They rattled in the air between them before falling away uselessly. Sasuke shrugged and asked, as if observing from far away "Do you hate him?"

The captain didn't move, but suddenly he seemed to Sasuke's eyes much older and wearier. "No," he said. "I don't think I could if I tried."

"Cousin said Itachi put you in a genjutsu, and that's why you wouldn't wake up for half a month," Sasuke said, and the captain dipped his head in confirmation. "What did he show you?" The captain was silent, and Sasuke quickly amended. "Sorry. I was just - "

"No, it's all right," the captain said, thoughtful. "It's relevant, actually. He showed me my life. A thousand iterations, from the day before the Fall until the day he...left, if I lived that long." He shook his head. "Most of my real memories I can tell from the false, but from the Mizukage's assassination onwards, it becomes muddied - especially during and after the two weeks we spent on the mainland. Sometimes, he kills me then; sometimes he saves my life. Sometimes he tells me his intentions to betray Hanabi-ha, sometimes he tells me he's going undercover to save it. Sometimes nothing extraordinary happens." He was watching Sasuke as he said it, almost expectant.

Sasuke frowned, his eyes drifting to the side as he thought. "You think he told you something, then, about what he's doing now," he realized, gaze snapping back to the captain's face. "You think that's why he tried to hide your memories."

"Correct," the captain agreed. "Likely something that seemed innocuous at the time. You spent time together when we returned. Did he say anything out of the ordinary, that you can recall?"

It was strangely easy to think about Itachi now. Sasuke dredged up the memories that already seemed faded and grey and combed through them clinically. "I can tell you everything I remember," he said. "I don't know what's important and what's not."

"Good," said the captain. "That's what I need."

Someone knocked on the door when Sasuke was just about out of words. He stopped and rolled shoulders he hadn't realized were tense as the captain turned to open the door.

"Nara wants us," Zabuza-sensei said, leaning around the door to squint at first the captain, then Sasuke. "Ten minutes, HQ."

"Copy that," said the captain. He gave Sasuke a nod. "Take a break," he said. "You - did well."

Zabuza-sensei stared after him in bemusement as the captain retreated, then looked at Sasuke. "The fuck you do to him?"

Sasuke licked his lips and shrugged.

"Well," said Zabuza-sensei. "Okay. Whatever. Off you toddle. I got a fucking paper-pushing session to get to and you're in the way of me and some fucking oatmeal before that happens."

Sasuke sidled out the doorway. Afternoon sent a faint glow through the paper over the windows, and the main room was abandoned except for Sai and Hinata poring over the same book at one of the center tables. He ducked into the pack sleeping quarters, where most of the others were sprawled out in their bunks, and slid down against the wall to sit on the floor.

There was an itch under his skin, and Sasuke wanted nothing more than to follow it outside, run until the icy wind numbed him head to toe, but he couldn't do that, and he especially couldn't do that alone. He jerked to his feet, pacing over to where Neji sat at the far end of his bunk, reading something with just as many mathematical symbols as kana.

"Hey," said Sasuke, flicking Neji's mask at him. "Come out to the training ground with me."

"Were you never taught manners?" was Neji's acrid response, but he brushed the mask aside and slid out of his bunk anyways. He slung the harness for his tanto over his head, slid his sunglasses over his eyes and jerked his head towards the door.

It wasn't snowing, but the ground was frozen beneath their feet and the clouds gave the sky an eerie silver cast. Sasuke's itch to run had turned into a different kind of impulse, and he split off from Neji as soon as they hit the training ground to find something to burn. Neji ignored him in turn, drawing his tanto and settling into a slow kata as Sasuke dumped an armful of wood onto a patch of bare ground and went back for more.

When the firewood pile was about knee-high, Sasuke reached for his chakra, muttered, "Katon: Goukakyuu no jutsu," and spat a massive fireball that set it ablaze in a billow of smoke. Shisui's katon tended towards pale gold, nearly the same color as his raiton, while Itachi's had been crimson with white-hot cores hidden beneath the surface. Sasuke's didn't have that kind of character yet, but he watched the red-orange flames dance and spark and wondered what kind of fire would be his hallmark.

The fire wasn't big enough, he realized, and turned back to the woods. He found a fallen tree, broke off massive branches to drag back and throw on top, and it wasn't until he was on his fifth trip that he realized he was building a funeral pyre. He stopped dead where he was, huffed out a silent laugh that turned white in the air in front of him.

His breath caught and then it was a sob and not a laugh, and he clutched hard at his temples and dropped to his knees next to his latest load of dead wood for the empty pyre for his dead family. What the hell was wrong with him? He was on the edge of hysteria, he recognized that in the rational side of his brain that watched what he was doing with clear detachment. His family was three years dead and gone and he knew that already for all three of those years, so why was this happening now?

Sakura'd seen her parents murdered right in front of her. Haku killed his own father after the man killed his mother. Sasuke hadn't even had to watch his family die and those two were both fine so why wasn't he? He was really, actually crying now, for some reason, the air escaping from his throat in soft whimpers as he dug his fingers into icy mud. He jerked his arm up, twisted his head to sink his teeth into his leather bracer, held his breath to quell the sounds spilling out of him, and shook silently against the ground.

He was lightheaded, dizzy, his jaw clenched so hard it creaked. If he could just stop - stop thinking about them, about it, if he could just get his breathing under control -

Slow exhale, inhale, hold until he couldn't hold it any longer. Slow exhale, inhale, hold, repeat. Again and again until his breath didn't shake and his eyes stopped watering and everything was fine as long as his mind stayed blank. He sat up on his heels slowly, pried his teeth out of his bracer. He wiped the damp off his face with his sleeve, took one more deep breath and stood.

Sasuke didn't know how long he'd been gone, but when he got back to the fire it was still roaring high though Neji was now standing before the bonfire with his tanto sheathed and hands clasped behind his back. He made no comment as Sasuke heaved the branch onto the blaze and watched the shower of sparks erupt.

Sasuke brushed the bark and mud off his hands. They weren't shaking anymore.

"Did you know how my father died?" Neji asked out of the blue.

Sasuke scowled at the fire and didn't answer. Neji didn't talk about his father, ever. The timing was suspicious.

"When I was four, the clan heir was kidnapped. Her father killed the kidnapper, Kumo's shinobigashira, and Kumo demanded his head as recompense." He smiled, a small, bitter thing that tainted his voice the next time he spoke. "Fortunately, the clan head had a twin, who was killed in his place. The peace between Konoha and Kumo was preserved, the slave-seal meant Kumo would not discover the secrets of the Byakugan, and the Hyuuga clan head kept his head." It was Sasuke's turn to look at him, and Neji's turn to stare into the fire. "My father was killed for all of that," he said. "And all that was because of Hinata-sama."

One minute, then two, when all the sound between them was the crackle of the flames. "That's why you hate her," Sasuke observed distantly, turning his eyes back to the pyre. Maybe he should feel something - horror, sympathy, pity? But he was hollow.

"I do not hate her," Neji corrected after a pause. "I did, for a long time. But a bird cannot help the color of the feathers it is hatched with. She would always have been born my superior, and I her subordinate." Light glinted off the metal plate of his hitai-ate as he clasped his hands in front of him. "She is not my enemy. We both have far greater enemies, and I will not waste my energy shirking my duty."

Was that Neji's grand message? Don't hate Itachi? But Itachi wasn't an innocent party in any way.

"Regardless of my feelings for Hinata-sama," said Neji, oblivious or ignoring Sasuke's rising impatience, "I still grieve my father." Oh. This was Neji trying to big brother him. Well, guess what? Sasuke already had a big brother, and he was a mass murderer! An Ichizokugoroshi - a Clan-Killer.

"My point," Neji said, clearly glaring despite his covered eyes, "is that death is normal for shinobi, but so is mourning. It does not last just one day or one year or a dozen. It is not limited by time. Everyone mourns differently. There is no shame in it. Just do not let it affect your work as a shinobi," he added as an afterthought.

"Sure," said Sasuke. He wasn't thinking about it now, so it wasn't a problem - and as long he didn't think about it, it wouldn't be a problem. That sounded like a pretty well practiced speech, though. "My cousin tell you that?"

Neji gave him a funny look. "No," he said. "Your brother told me that."

"I have cooking duty," said Neji the next morning, rattling a handful of coins from their communal funds in his general direction. "Come with me. I require assistance transporting purchases back to base camp."

Sasuke put down the kunai he was oiling and gave him a droll look. "You just want me to carry your bags for you, don't you?" Neji huffed and crossed his arms over his chest, and Sasuke grimaced, sliding the kunai back until his spare holster and slinging his katana over his shoulder. "Fine, let's go."

The bottom of Sasuke's face was covered by his respirator. The top of Neji's face was covered by his bandana and sunglasses. They had one uncovered face between the two of them, but Kirigakure was a ninja village so they didn't get so much as a second glance.

"What're you cooking today?" Sasuke asked, sliding out of the way of a mule-drawn cart. It was late enough in the morning that the streets were crowded with both civilians and shinobi. He watched them under his eyelashes as they passed.

"Miso soup," Neji said distractedly, eyeing the grocery across the street. "Steamed rice. Steamed takenoko. Tsukemono salad. Grilled fish, I have not decided which at this time."

"Painfully traditional," Sasuke noted dryly.

"There is nothing wrong with traditional fare," Neji retorted. "It will be filling as long as we make enough, and we have enough ingredients that we only need to purchase fish and takenoko."

"Fine, it's efficient," Sasuke muttered under his breath.

"Go is on dinner duty and requested additional ingredients," added Neji, leaning over to inspect a carrot.

Oh, no. "What's she trying to make?" Sasuke asked suspiciously.

Neji gave him a look of commiseration. "Tempura and ramen."

So the tempura would be undercooked and the ramen would be overcooked. Sasuke sighed.

"She will not improve if she does not practice," Neji said grimly, and went to go pay for his carrots.

Practicing was fine. Sasuke just didn't want to have to eat it if there was a risk of food poisoning.

Across the street, there was a fish market. The fish weren't alive, but since it was winter and below freezing, they were as close to fresh as they could get this far from the coast. He glanced over his shoulder but Neji was still busy with the grocer, so he crossed over by himself.

"Morning," said the shopkeeper, eyeing him disinterestedly.

Sasuke nodded in greeting, giving the fish a cursory glance. He pointed at the crate of fish lined up on the ice at the far edge of the stall and raised an eyebrow.

"Saury from the northern coast. Five kilos is a hundred ryou," the shopkeeper answered, squinting at him a little closer now that he appeared to be a paying customer.

"We'll take ten kilograms," Neji said, coming up behind Sasuke. He handed Sasuke his bag of carrots and reached for his wallet.

"You could at least help," Sasuke complained, two stores later when he had four bags slung over his shoulder and Neji had a serene zero.

"That is your job," said Neji, unconcerned. "Today, I choose, you carry."

Ugh. Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Hurry up."

"Be patient," Neji muttered. "Go still wants okra and potatoes."

There was a small, open-air produce stand at the western edge of the city that had some pretty good potatoes the last time Sasuke'd swung around. They could head over there -

"You there."

Neji's jaw clenched. Sasuke shot a glance at him because that was an entitled high-caste voice if he knew one, one with authority, one that expected to be obeyed, and one that was clearly directed at the two of them. The guy and his companion were wearing standard flak jackets, and Sasuke didn't know where he stood on the Village totem but it definitely wasn't below Sasuke so he said, "Sir," in the least aggressive way he could manage. He wasn't super successful.

"Sir," said Neji in a much more neutral tone.

The Kiri shinobi were watching them with detached interest. The shinobi jerked his head in a summons, and Neji stepped closer. Reluctantly, Sasuke shadowed him. "Do you recognize him, Umeko-chan?" the shinobi said, staring right at Sasuke. Sasuke narrowed his eyes at them both.

They were around the captain's age. The kunoichi wearing a dress, long, flowing skirt parted in the middle over a shorter, tighter one, the kind Sakura would probably drool over: that told Sasuke she was rich enough to afford clothes like that and competent enough that they wouldn't hinder her. The shinobi was wearing the regulation uniform, the cloth worn but fine.

The kunoichi didn't look anywhere near as snobbish as her companion despite her clothes. "No, Mitsuhide," she said patiently. "He doesn't. Please stop pulling every genin you see off the streets to ask me that." She smiled at them dismissively. "You can go."

"No, wait," Mitsuhide said, holding out his arm to block their path. "Look again, Umeko-chan, you didn't look."

Umeko sighed, crossed her arms over her flak jacket, and gave Sasuke a resigned glance. "On the Hoteimaru, in the harbour, no?" she suggested.

"See? The little rat does look familiar," the shinobi mused, looking over Sasuke like he was a particularly interesting insect. "It's...nice...to see you survived the war," he said in a tone that implied anything but. "I suppose your team did not?"

Sasuke breathed through the anger that raged wild through his veins even though he knew Sakura and Naruto were perfectly fine. His hands were shaking, and he knew he couldn't reach his katana before the shinobi got to him but he itched to try. Neji's hand closed on his wrist, firm and warning.

"Please excuse us," Neji interjected, with a slight dip of his head. "We are expected to report for training - "

"I don't think so," said Mitsuhide. Sasuke's lips peeled back in a silent snarl. "I didn't dismiss you, genin. Know your place."

"Mitsuhide," Umeko amondished, rolling her eyes.

"He did tell you politely," Sasuke spat, even as Neji's grip on him tightened to painful, "or were you too - "

A whirl of a white-furred cloak filled his vision and the detached part of Sasuke's brain noted that once again, Shisui had perfect timing, and then that he must be getting tired of having to bail Sasuke out of tight corners. He wore a mask Sasuke hadn't seen before, curving over his left eyebrow and covering his empty right eye and most of his nose before cutting diagonally across his cheek to his jawline, as well as a furred cloak thrown over his left pauldron. Sasuke could see the edges of the leopard-mask between the cloak and the pauldron, the seals etched in the porcelain glowing faintly with chakra. "Leave them," Shisui ordered, without a single glance for Neji or Sasuke. "They have not provoked you, and they are needed elsewhere. Be on your way."

Mitsuhide's lip curled. "Who are you?"

Shisui looked at him, flat, and said, "I guarantee that I outrank you."

"I am Mitsuhide, jounin of the Makanai Clan," said Mitsuhide as Umeko closed her eyes briefly behind him. "Tell me your name."

"Kita no Juuta," Shisui said, icy as the north he'd named himself for. "Jounin in the Hana Division. But I hear your people called me Yukihyou."

Mitsuhide's face didn't change, but Sasuke got the impression that the naked arrogance had faded into wariness at the name. "You can't be from the high caste," he said, still defiant. "So you don't outrank me."

Shisui tilted his head up to stare him down. "You mainislanders with your blood purity delusions of superiority," he mused, blunt, almost deliberately provoking. "You who would keep slaves of your own comrades; I'll never understand it." He leaned in a little closer. "Perhaps you didn't get the briefing. I am Hana Division. These genin are Hana Division. We answer to our commander; we don't interfere with you and you all don't interfere with us. We are outside whatever authority you believe your blood grants you."

"Aa, Hana Division. Understood," Umeko interrupted before her friend could dig himself deeper. She put a hand on Mitsuhide's shoulder, ignoring his ire. "Well met, Juuta of the North. We won't disrupt you any longer. Mitsuhide, come."

Sasuke watched them go and let out a quiet breath, the air hissing out between his teeth as he wrestled his anger under control. "Sorry," he said to Shisui when he could talk without biting his head off.

"It's not just you," Shisui said reassuringly, relaxing as the Kiri jounin drifted out of his sight. "Most of Hana-ha has been staying away from the rest of the village since we've got living quarters and training grounds earmarked, but we still have shinobi who've gone into the city now and then, especially since we're starting to take missions. Hostilities between the loyalists and the Hanran are still high and our shinobi don't look high caste. We've got squad leaders and the other captains putting out fires left and right."

"I wish you would control your temper," Neji muttered, shooting Sasuke a glare. "You make us more enemies when you allow yourself to be provoked.

"That is true," Shisui agreed without accusation. "Peace is unfamiliar now. Shinobi on both sides are still looking for fights."

Sasuke simmered, but neither of them were wrong. "What's with 'Kita no Juuta'?" he asked instead. "That's new."

Shisui shrugged. "Trying to establish a shinobi cover. Even Ao has yet to recognize me, and spending less time in full Anbu uniform is less conspicuous." He surveyed them both. "Well, you have the rest of the day off so you don't actually have training to report to, but I don't recommend you stay around town. If you're picking up groceries, get them now while I'm still free and we'll all get out of here. Sound good?"

Neji, of the pack, wasn't one of the ones who needed supervision cooking, so when they got back to their library, Sasuke dumped his bags in the kitchenette and abandoned him. Shisui'd split as soon as they walked through the door, spreading out on one of the tables in the main room with a frankly alarming number of documents.

Sai and Sakura were also at one of the tables, bracketing Naruto on either side. "If it can't divide, then you have to look at the next digit over," Sakura was saying grimly.

Naruto groaned burying his head in his arms. "But why?" he demanded desperately. "Then the numbers are bigger!"

"You cannot force a larger number into a smaller number," Sai explained patiently. "Therefore, you must make the number that is to be divided larger."

Naruto made a noise of helpless frustration. Yeah, Sasuke didn't want to be part of that, so he swung around into the pack's sleeping quarters.

Temari had her battle fan spread out on the floor, taking up nearly the entire room. "Sorry," she said without any actual remorse. A pot of melted wax sat beside her, and as Sasuke edged around her, she brushed it over the stiff canvas. The elaborate painted design in hues of blue centered around a stylized cyclone, silver where the rest of the canvas was midnight blue. It was the Senpuu Clan symbol, apparently, and not even Temari was shameless enough to paint over a stolen clan heirloom.

"Again?" Sasuke asked, wrinkling his nose at the smell as he settled on the edge of his bunk.

"That was the other side," Temari said absently, leaning over to smooth the wax in with her bare hands. "For canvas tessen like these, you only need to renew the wax every year or so, but Kiri's extra wet so I figured a touch up couldn't hurt. Hey!" she yelped, as a ball of fur bounded across the room, dangerously close to the pot of wax.

A second streak of fur, golden-white, blurred past in a pounce, and Shiba straightened with a doggy grin and Haku's rabbit in his mouth, tail wagging. Temari eyed him warily. "Don't eat that," she warned. "Haku would be upset."

Shiba chuffed a laugh, eyes dancing playfully. Haku's rabbit hung in his mouth, docile.

"C-could you b-bring it up h-here, S-Shiba-san?" Hinata asked from the top bunk. She didn't need to do the same kind of maintenance on her hiogi. Her fans were wire and slats of bone, nothing more. "O-or, i-if it's t-too much t-trouble - ah." She cut off abruptly as the hound made a flying leap to where she was. "T-thank you."

Sasuke unsheathed his katana, reaching for an oiling cloth. Downtime was weird and made him restless. There'd always been another meal to hunt or prepare for, another rotation of guard duty when he wasn't sleeping, another session of training stolen between moment of sleeping and action. Having an entire day off where he didn't have to do any of that, or worry about starving or being attacked, was very, very strange. "Where's Ichi?" he asked.

"Out," she said, leaning back to stretch out. "Shichi was feeling restless, so they went to go stretch their legs."

Gaara did? In the cold? Maybe the bijuu was stirring again. It was just as sluggish as its jinchuuriki was in the winter, but still foul-tempered and just about the only thing that could make Gaara do what Gaara didn't want to do.

Hinata leaned down over the edge of her bunk, and Shiba poked his muzzle over as well, upside down.  
"A-ano," she said, holding out the rabbit. "W-would you l-like to h-hold h-him?"

Not particularly. But he hesitated too long. Hinata gripped the edge of the makeshift bed frame with one hand, the rabbit tucked close to her chest with the other, and swung down into the bunk with him. "H-here," she said, and pressed the tiny creature into his hands.

Sasuke strangled his groan because making Hinata cry was cardinal sin number one in the pack, and the reason Neji either spent hours discreetly glowering at or was that offender. "Thanks," he muttered grudgingly.

Hinata had cloth wound over her eyes, but she tilted her face towards him expectantly. Sasuke looked at her and then down at the rabbit and then up at her again. "It's...warm," he tried.

Hinata beamed. She settled on the pile of his futon and blankets in the corner, pulled out a pair of senbon and a skein of yarn, and started doing...something.

Sasuke grimaced. Clearly, he wasn't going to be able to give the rabbit back to her. He didn't want to drop it over the edge of the bunk either, because he was one up off the ground and the thing looked kind of breakable.

Temari smirked at him and made absolutely no move to help.

Sasuke scowled at her and kept the rabbit, cupping it in one hand and maneuvering his katana back in its sheath with the other hand. It was all right, he guessed. The rabbit wasn't pissing on him or trying to bite him or anything, so he guessed it could stay. Even if it was stopping him from cleaning his sword.

Neji appeared in the doorway. "Food," he announced. He gave Sasuke and the rabbit a weird look.

Shiba gave a high pitched yip of excitement and launched himself off the top bunk. Neji ducked and whirled as the ninken landed behind him. "Do not!" he snapped, vanishing after the hound.

In general, the captain's ninken didn't make very good teachers because they didn't know much about human history or culture or politics or weapons. They were dogs. They didn't care.

They were, however, capable of running physical exercises, which is what happened after the entire pack but mostly Naruto got tired of doing nothing and being forbidden from spray painting hideous faces on random buildings in town.

"Again," drawled Pakkun, from his usual perch on Bull's head.

Naruto snarled under his breath, crouched on the balls of his feet with one hand braced against the snow and the other clutching a kunai.

Sasuke agreed. Uhei was a speedy little rat and he would not. hold. still.

Sakura blew her bangs out of her face. "Shi," she said without taking her eyes off the hound. "What's the play?"

Sasuke narrowed his eyes at the bell hanging from a strip of ribbon in Uhei's jaws. The ninken shook his head playfully to make it jangle and sat. And waited. And yawned, snapping his jaws to catch the strap before the bell could hit the ground.

"Gah," said Naruto, vibrating in rage and desire.

"He's too fast for us to catch by chasing him," Sasuke said. Sakura huffed disgusted agreement. "We need to limit his mobility. You have wire on you?"

"'Course," said Sakura, digging in her back pouch with one hand. "We're going to need - "

"A herder," Sasuke agreed, turning to Naruto.

"Uhh," said Naruto.

"Make a bunch of bunshin. Keep him from leaving the area," Sasuke clarified.

"Oh, yeah! I can do that," said Naruto, beaming. He crouched up on his haunches, giving Uhei a predatory stare. Uhei was not impressed.

"We'll trade off?" suggested Sakura to Sasuke. "He can't dodge if he's airborne."

Sasuke nodded. "Get in position, Roku." He waved vaguely in Uhei's direction, hoping Naruto hadn't forgotten what to do in the past thirty seconds.

"Ganbatte!" Naruto said cheerfully with just a few too many teeth, and scampered off. Uhei turned to keep him in his line of view, curious but unconcerned, and gummed at the bell.

"Do you want first swing? Sakura offered, looping wire around the handle of her kunai with practiced movements.

Sasuke jerked his head at her to go ahead, drawing a kunai in each of his hands. "Get ready," he ordered. They only needed one good hit.

"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" Naruto roared from the other side of the field, and both their heads snapped up as copies of their teammate exploded across the training grounds in a spray of snow.

"Gods damn it, Roku!" Sakura growled under her breath as she fumbled the knot in her wire. "Can't you wait for like five seconds until we're actually ready?"

Sasuke shot past her, winding up and hurling one of his kunai as he sprinted, but Uhei leapt out of the way gracefully, weaving in and out of Naruto's bunshin.

Naruto yelped as the kunai caught one of his bunshin in the middle of the forehead. "Quit the friendly fire!" he hollered. "Just cuz that's not me don't mean it don't hurt!"

Frankly, better the bunshin than Sasuke. Maybe if Naruto learned to dodge better, his clones wouldn't get hit either.

Sakura's kunai hissed through the throng of clones, who shrieked and windmilled out of the way as it passed. Uhei ducked, slinking low to the ground, and vaulted up off a clone. He collided paws-first with a second, who sputtered and dissipated under the onslaught. Sakura hurled a second kunai that hissed just under Uhei's legs as the hound twisted, and Sasuke joined the edges of the crowd of clones.

Living with the wolves meant he knew a henge would be useless against the hound so he didn't bother, just added his kunai barrage to Sakura's assault. Sakura yanked on her wired kunai with a shout, and Uhei yipped in alarm as the kunai flew back towards him again -

\- and missed, when Uhei executed a tight flip off the back of a clone and landed in the thick of another group.

Sasuke gritted his teeth, drawing another kunai and a length of wire. Too many clones. "Dispel!" he shouted, hoping Naruto would get the message and not think he was in a genjutsu.

Fortunately, Naruto's bunshin exploded en masse into clouds of smoke, blanketing the snow. Sasuke charged in blindly, hurling the kunai towards where Uhei had been. The blade swung around in an arc as he tugged the wire, and Uhei's silhouette swerved as the wire cut off his path of egress.

Sakura darted around, launching yet another kunai from the distance, and the ninken pivoted on a single paw, only barely avoiding it.

"Ha!" cried Naruto, snatching the kunai from the air and hurling it again. The hound hopped out of the way, almost insultingly languid, and straight into Sasuke's path as he charged.

Sasuke grabbed the hound in a full body tackle. "Gotcha," he grunted, wrestling all of Uhei's long, flailing limbs down. Uhei let out a whine of surrender, and Sasuke got an arm free to grab for the bell, mindful of the ninken's snapping teeth.

The bell wasn't there.

"What," he sputtered, and Uhei took advantage of his distraction to wriggle free. The ninken ambled three meters to the right as Sasuke and Naruto watched, dumbfounded, and dipped his head down to pick up the bell, where it had dropped in the chaos.

In the distance, Sakura made an inarticulate noise of frustration and rage.

"Nice try, kids," said Pakkun dryly, examining the pad of his paw. "Ten minute break, then we'll go again."

Sasuke took a deep breath and went to yank his misfired kunai out of the trees.

Naruto liked to sleep in, but he also needed much less sleep than anybody else besides Gaara. This meant that given the chance, Naruto would sleep past noon on some days, but on others would also wake up at unreasonable hours and expect everyone else to feel the same way he did.

"Let's go to town," he suggested, popping his head up over the edge of Sasuke's bunk. When Sasuke didn't give him the desired response - attention - he repeated in a much louder voice, "Let's go to town!"

"Argh," said Sasuke, and jammed his pillow over his head.

"Shhh!" Sakura hissed from her top bunk. It was too early for even morning warm-ups.

"Come on!" Naruto whined. "I wanna go out where there's people."

"You already got busted by the sensei for stealing stuff and doing graffiti," Sasuke muttered through his pillow.

"That was like two months ago," Naruto protested. "C'mon, I promise I won't steal anything. We've got the headband thingys, I just wanna walk around."

"Go 'way or shut up," grumbled Temari, who wasn't a morning person until she was awake.

"Gaara!" Naruto's head vanished down to the lower bunk. "Gaara, you wanna come?"

A pause. "Yes," said Gaara.

"Yes!" hissed Naruto.

There was a light thump as Hinata dropped down from her bunk. "I-I'll come," she offered.

That was a bad, bad idea. The thieving team minus Temari, who was the self-restraint for all three of them, plus Hinata, who was a little bit of a wild card depending on who she decided to be? Sasuke heaved a sigh and threw back the blankets. "Wait. I'm coming," he muttered. If those three ran into someone like that Mitsuhide guy from the other day, he didn't want to think of the kind of chaos they'd wreck.

Sai was for some reason already awake at oh-gods-o'clock, ink smeared on his skin as he frowned down at the scroll in front of him. He looked up when they trooped out into the main room, took in the four of them, and said, resigned, "I will accompany you. Give me two minutes to prepare."

He came back with Sakura, who looked extremely annoyed but fully dressed and also very distrustful of the rest of them. "I want to not get in trouble for this," she warned them, jabbing a finger at Naruto in particular.

"Gogo-chan!" said Naruto, delighted.

They got their circus act on the road with only a minor hiccup when Naruto tripped over a shrub and promptly accused it of attacking him, when everyone knew only the Senju had Mokuton. The last time Sasuke'd been in this part of town was with Itachi, when they - right before he -

Sasuke steered himself clear of that train of thought before he had an awkward breakdown in front of the others.

The streets were slippery with snow, and more drifted down from the skies as they went. Sasuke trailed the rest of the group with Hinata, her hand tucked in the crook of his non dominant elbow. Naruto led the way, picking turns seemingly at random with Gaara following tolerantly.

The shops were just opening up, workers sweeping away the half-melted mess of slush from their entryways and unfurling the awning covers. The aroma of fresh bread drifted from a nearby bakery, attracting Naruto's attention for all of fifteen seconds before he was off again. It was like walking a dog, except the dogs Sasuke knew best were the captain's ninken and they would never be so undisciplined.

"Why am I here?" Sakura groused, throwing up her hands when she and Sai caught up with Naruto just in time for him to throw himself across the street at a takoyaki stand, Gaara in tow.

Sai made a vaguely sympathetic hum, his eyes focused on scanning the street around them. Sasuke realized he was doing the same, as they had when they'd been on the run. Like then, they were once again in a village both friendly and enemy, except now they were older, stronger, and had allies at their backs other than just Neko-sensei. Someone had to keep an eye on their surroundings, and seeing as that definitely wouldn't be Naruto, Sasuke figured Sai and the two actual sensors could use the help.

Like a pair of hunting dogs, Hinata's and Gaara's heads turned in unison. The rest of the group followed suit. "Ah," said Sai pleasantly. "We've met you before."

Sasuke didn't see anything at first - then, in the reflection of a window, a massive, hulking shape. He tightened his grip on Hinata reflexively, and she made a soft, displeased noise. "Sorry," he muttered, unable to tear his eyes away from the giant freaking tiger rounding the corner ahead of them.

Whether the tiger - and the shinobi with the tiger - smelled them or heard them Sasuke didn't know, but both their eyes locked on Sai almost instantly. "Well," said the shinobi, in a voice neither angry nor surprised, nor particularly loud though it carried under the noise of the marketplace. "You were a shinobi after all, Itaru-kun."

Sai inclined his head, both a greeting and an apology. "I am," he admitted. "It is - good to see yourself and Koharu-san well, Ren-san."

There was a large, jagged scar, still pink and puffy, cutting across the tiger's shoulder, a break in the striped pelt where the fur had been shaved away. The tiger chuffed and said, "Told you," to its partner, who rubbed a fond hand over Koharu's muzzle.

"My team," Sai introduced politely, gesturing to Hinata, who let go of Sasuke's arm to step forward, and Gaara, who wandered up on his other side. "Perhaps you have heard the names Tatsuko and Rakushi during your observations of the Lower City?"

"Aa," the shinobi - Ren - agreed, as Hinata gave a slight bow in greeting. "I recognize you."

Naruto bolted up then, having finally noticed that Gaara had abandoned him for the massive nintora chatting up the others. "Hi!" Naruto beamed, and immediately turned to Koharu. "You're a familiar and not a summons so it's okay to talk to you, right?"

Sakura slapped a hand over her eyes as the tiger chuffed, exchanging an amused glance with Ren. "Yes," Koharu rumbled, and offered magnanimously, "You may touch my fur if you like."

Naruto gasped comically, both hands coming up to cover his mouth, and edged forward.

"And this is a team we work closely with," Sai continued, as if he had not been interrupted.

"Hi," said Sakura with a small wave. "We're in the same unit."

"That's my genin I hope you're not menacing."

It was Shisui again, with his half-mask and white fur cloak, but at least this time Sasuke didn't need to be rescued. Shisui was relaxed as he sauntered up, really relaxed and not just the pretend-relaxed that warned of danger.

Ren smiled, reading into the tone rather than the words, and a hint of a long incisor flashed with that smile. "I wouldn't dare. I am Ren, and this is my partner Koharu, of the Torakuro Clan. I've encountered Itaru-kun and his team before, but I don't believe we've been introduced."

Shisui's mouth twitched, amusement at some part of that. "Well met. Juuta, of the north," he introduced himself. "From Hana Division. We've not been on the Mainland long."

Naruto twisted from where he had both forearms buried in Koharu's ruff. "Sensei! Look, she's beautiful!"

Shisui winced. "Ah, Roku - "

"No bother," Koharu reassured him, the amused light in her golden eyes mirrored in Ren's.

"I appreciate your patience, Koharu-san. Kids," Shisui said, turning to the pack members. "I hope you've enjoyed your early outing, but you're about to miss your morning lessons."

Morning lessons? They didn't have - oh. The captain wanted to change things, add himself to the teaching rotation and revamp the entire schedule. This must be part of it.

The white-hot fury hit out of nowhere. Suddenly Sasuke was straight up pissed and he had no fucking clue why. Shisui said something - Sasuke didn't hear it, too focused on keeping his breath even and his muscles loose.

A hand dropped down on his shoulder. "Are you okay?" Shisui asked carefully, scrutinizing him with a dark eye.

Was he okay? Sasuke was sick and tired of being asked if he was okay. He was fine. He was fine. He was -

Shisui grabbed him in a shunshin and Sasuke stumbled his landing, whirled around, and buried his fist into the trunk of the nearest tree.

Which hurt. A lot, gods damn it all.

Sasuke yanked his hand back out of the splintered bark with a hiss, clutching his wrist with his good hand as he staggered backwards. They were at the training grounds; Shisui'd taken him halfway across the village. "Son of a - "

"Hey," said Shisui from his periphery, reaching for him with green flickering around his hand, but Sasuke ripped away with a snarl, took in the familiar features with furious eyes. Uchiha features.

"Do you know?" Sasuke demanded, spinning sharply to face him. "Did you know? Did you know what he did?"

He didn't have to answer; Sasuke could see it in his eye - that terrible, knowing sorrow. And that broke the fragile hold he had on his temper.

"Why aren't you angry?" Sasuke roared, shoving at his cousin's chest as hard as he could. "That was our family! That was your family too, so why aren't you angry?"

"Sasuke - " said Shisui, swaying slightly from the onslaught but otherwise unaffected. "Sasuke-kun, listen. What Itachi did was - was terrible, but he - "

"Don't say 'he did it for a reason!" Sasuke spat. "You can't say it was just a mission, that was our family!"

"If the Uchiha didn't die," Shisui said, ice cold and immoveable, "it wouldn't just have been our family and the Nara. It would have been the Hyuuga. It would have been the captain, since he was so loyal to the Sandaime and carried our doujutsu. It would have been Sai, on the wrong side of the battlefield. It would have been Naruto. It would have been the Fall, but with our clan alive and your friends dead or hunted and you sitting pretty in Konoha like Danzo is, and you would be the villain, not him. Is that what you want?"

Sasuke wanted to say, yes, because that was his clan, his parents, the Fall would have happened anyway but he still could have had them - but that meant no Naruto, no Hinata, no Neji, no Sakura, no baby Hanabi. No pack. No Yorozoku. He spun again, lashed out at the tree he'd hit before, and gritted his teeth as the pain jarred up his shin.

Shisui rarely smiled, but he did now and it was hard and bitter. "If I had been in Itachi's shoes the night of the Fall, I can't promise that I wouldn't have made the same choice - especially without the hindsight knowledge that Danzo planned a betrayal. So I grieve our family, but they made their own decisions too. There was no scenario in which everyone walked away from the Fall alive, Sasuke-kun, it was a no-win situation."

Sasuke drew a kunai from his holster, burying it in the bark and twisting savagely, but his heart wasn't in it anymore. He yanked it back out, hurled it off deeper into the forest, and glared after it. And then his breath caught in his throat again and he jerked away, sliding down to lean against the abused tree.

"But you're wrong. I am," Shisui said, when enough time had passed that Sasuke was wrung out and shivering from cold and grief.

"What?" Sasuke croaked, lost and only half-interested in the response now.

"Angry," his cousin clarified, and his eye flashed though there was no change in his posture or position. "But not because of the Fall - that was following orders. But attacking me, doing that to the captain, turning against Hanabi-ha? That was betrayal."

He sank down next to Sasuke, resting his forearms on his knees and clasping his hands in front of him. "It hurts," he admitted, "and I don't know why he did that. I probably never will. He was my Clan Heir first, then my friend, and then - then he was like a brother, and he turned on me and threw it all away, and I'm - I'm furious." He rolled his head to the side so he could see Sasuke with his good eye. "And so are you."

Sasuke huffed a humorless laugh. No use denying that.

"And that's fine," Shisui said. "That's fine. Just don't let it control you. Don't make it your life, and you'll be all right."

If Shisui was waiting for a response he wouldn't get one, because Sasuke was all out of emotions for today. Try again tomorrow. He let his head fall back against the tree.

The bite of the wind was getting harder to endure. He cleared his throat. "Probably missed morning lessons," Sasuke said gruffly.

It was a weak maybe-joke, but Shisui laughed anyways, reaching over to ruffle his hair. That was...safe, because Itachi never really did that, not like Shisui did. "Probably missed the captain's entire explanation of your training schedule," he agreed, false cheer that turned real at the end. "He put a good bit of time in that. He'll be disappointed."

Sasuke slid a glance sideways at him. "The captain's really going to train us? Seems a bit below his paygrade."

Shisui's mouth quirked. "You're lucky that he is. He's trained some of the best Anbu operatives - including Cat-15."

Sasuke's eyes widened. "He trained Neko-sensei?"

"Sure did," Shisui said. "He got drafted as an instructor sometimes when he was suspended from active duty, and she ran with his team, before. You're in good hands."

It was about six minutes into their first training session with the captain and it was getting clearer and clearer that the captain didn't really know what he was doing. To be fair, Sasuke, Sai, and Gaara didn't really know what to do either. None of the four of them were much of talkers anyway, so the majority of their session so far had just been them looking at each other silently.

"You all have shown clear aptitude for ninjutsu," the captain said at last, and Sasuke refocused on him. "I'll be helping you hone that, as well as supplemental taijutsu. Shichi and Hachi, the styles you've been using are very distinctive, and Shi, your repertoire is effective but general. We will work on changing that and widening your arsenals."

"Hai," said Sai, and Gaara and Sasuke nodded.

"Good," said the captain. There was another needlessly long pause. "I have chakra paper for you," he said, producing three small strips of paper from his back pouch. "Hachi. What does this do?"

Sai frowned for a long moment, and Sasuke glad the captain hadn't asked him because he had no idea. "Chakra paper. Chakra channelled into chakra paper can reveal the elemental affinity of the user," he recited.

"Correct," said the captain, passing a piece to each of them. "I'm able to perform ninjutsu from all five of the basic elemental categories, so whichever you have, I have something to teach you."

"Channel chakra?" Gaara asked, turning his paper over curiously.

"Yes. One at a time," the captain said. "Hachi, go first, since you know how it goes."

Sai's eyes blanked in the way that said he really didn't know how it went, except in theory, but he lifted his paper anyways. He filtered in a tiny pulse.

Nothing happened. He frowned, and before the captain could intervene, gave it a bigger jolt. The paper crumbled away into nothing, tiny specks drifting down to the ground.

"Shichi," said the captain, and Gaara, whose attention had drifted to follow the paper, looked back up, eyes wide and startled. "What does that mean?"

Gaara glanced down at the remains of the paper, at Sai, and back at the captain. "Failure."

Sai frowned in consternation.

"No," said the captain. "That was a successful result. Again. What does that mean?"

Gaara scowled ferociously, but not even he would go against the captain. "Earth," he guessed after a long pause where his face twitched like he was reacting to someone talking to him though nobody was.

"Correct," said the captain, and Gaara relaxed back into a languid slouch. "Hachi, your primary affinity is earth." He nodded to Sasuke. "Go ahead, Shi. Same thing - a small burst of chakra, about half as much as a regular henge. What do you think your affinity will be?"

"Uchiha are fire-natured," answered Sasuke, releasing his chakra into the paper. It crumpled like tinfoil, and Sasuke narrowed his eyes at it. He didn't know what a fire-natured paper looked like, but it was probably not that.

"Apparently not all of them," the captain said dryly. "Hachi, what does that mean?"

Sai stared at the paper blankly, sifting through the possibilities. "Lightning," he concluded.

"Lightning," the captain agreed. "You're in luck, Shi, that's my primary affinity. Raiton for you."

Raiton meant powerful things like Shisui's Yukihyou or the captain's Raijuu. Sasuke was very okay with that, and anyways, the Uchiha were gone so what did it matter if he was or wasn't fire-natured anyways?

"Shichi," said the captain. "Go."

He might as well have been talking to one of his hounds, but Gaara didn't mind. His paper split straight down the middle, each side crumbling into small pieces that stuck together as they flaked to the ground.

That was...earth? If not earth, then wind? But the captain was silent. Sasuke shifted on his feet until he noticed what he was doing and forced himself to still. "Shichi," the captain said at last, and the look Gaara gave him was wary. "Your clan had a kekkei-genkai, didn't it?"

Gaara frowned. He shrugged.

"Jiton," said the captain. "Magnet release. All four of the Kazekage have had it, and candidacy is generally hereditary. It would make sense for you to have it as well."

Gaara looked entirely blank, and not because that was his default expression.

"Unfortunately," the captain said, "the Sharingan can't copy ninjutsu from kekkei-genkai, and jiton are also fairly distinctive. Fortunately, having jiton also means you have both wind and earth affinities, and those I can help with." He glanced up to check the position of the sun. "I have seventy minutes until I have to be at Command. Let's make the most of that time."

The problem was, Sasuke quickly realized, that the captain was a genius in terms of chakra theory. He could break down and understand jutsu as the handseals were performed and as a result, his attempts to explain them were not very successful. "Raiton: Sanda. Do you need the seals again?" the captain asked, apparently calm. Unlike Sasuke.

Sasuke gritted his teeth. "No," he growled. "I got it. Ox, dragon, snake, monkey, dragon, monkey, monkey, bird, dragon, ox, monkey."

The captain waved a hand at him to go ahead and crossed his arms over his chest.

Sasuke took a deep breath. He formed the seals one after the other, the shapes familiar from years of drills. Even on the run, even without chakra, they'd practiced these religiously - that was one of the first things Neko-sensei taught them to do. His chakra gathered about his hands, the electric buzz of his chakra coming easier than katon ever had, but when he clasped his hands into the last monkey and growled, "Raiton: Sanda!" the that sparks fizzled at his hands puffed into nothing. He snarled.

"Again," said the captain.

Sasuke tried again. The chakra crackled at his hands, but as he finished the jutsu it died. And again.

"You're doing something wrong," the captain observed. And Sasuke did his damndest not to try and behead him because, yes, obviously. "Go again, slowly. You're shaping chakra, not signalling."

Don't flip out. Do not flip out on the captain. Not the freaking captain. Ox. Dragon. Snake. Monkey. Dragon -

"What are you thinking?" the captain interrupted.

Sasuke paused, his concentration broken. "Dragon, monkey..?"

"Don't think about the seals," the captain said. "Think about how the seals mould your chakra. Think about how each handseal modifies the existing form. Think about the chakra and what shape you want it to take - both the process and the end result. Start over. Again."

That was a lot of stuff to keep in his head while he was trying to pull this off.

"And don't get frustrated," the captain ordered. "It'll interfere with your concentration."

Sasuke had to walk that one off to get his mind back on track.

The captain drifted over to Gaara, who was slamming his hands into the ground over and over between seals with a look of deep concentration, and one of the captain's ninken - Bisuke - wandered over to watch as Sasuke kept working on the raiton. His raiton. Because he was going to master it, no matter how stubborn it was or how long it took.

Ox. Dragon. Snake. Monkey.

He breathed in with the ebb of his chakra, exhaled with the flow.

Dragon. Monkey. Monkey. Bird.

For power, for control, for size and pattern. He moulded the jutsu like unformed clay with the seals.

Dragon. Ox. Monkey.

"Katon: Samba!" Sasuke growled, and this time, little crackles of lightning zigzagged off his knuckles before dissipating, and Sasuke let out a breath of surprise and victory. Bisuke panted at him encouragingly.

All right. All he needed to do now was figure out what he'd just done.

"That concludes our session for today," said the captain, once all three of them had been thoroughly frustrated up until they each achieved a passable jutsu in the last ten minutes, which was suspiciously coincidental. So maybe the captain did have some idea of what he was doing.

"Thank you, Taichou," said Sai, who had been and still was the most composed of them three.

The captain looked pained. "I'm teaching you," he said, and looked expectant. Guruko, the hound that'd been ostensibly supervising Gaara, chuffed a laugh as Bisuke visibly rolled his eyes.

Sasuke exchanged a glance with Sai. "Thank you...Hatake-sensei," Sai tried.

That got them upgraded to a grimace. "Not Hatake," he said. "Just Kakashi."

This time, Gaara swung around to give Sasuke a look. The captain was really asking the moon of them today.

"Kakashi-sensei," Sai amended.

Sasuke was definitely not comfortable with saying that with his own mouth so he ducked his head in agreement and let Sai take one for the team.

The captain still didn't look entirely satisfied but nodded. "Don't practice these without supervision until I clear you," he warned. "Even C-ranked ninjutsu can do major damage if performed incorrectly."

And then he and his hounds were gone, like the whole afternoon had been some kind of fever dream.

Sasuke looked at the other two. "What happens now?"

"Train," answered Gaara, in a tone that implied that there was no other possible answer.

"Fifteen-hundred hours to sixteen-hundred hours: individual concentration practice, except for those assigned to meal preparation," Sai recited. "Dinner at sixteen-hundred hours. Team practice, drills, or inter-team exercises begin at seventeen-hundred."

"Right," said Sasuke, and abandoned their spot to go find one of the other groups.

The group that'd been with Zabuza-sensei was easiest to find because they were near the part of the stream that looped around like a horseshoe and also because they included Naruto, who was loud. They too had been summarily abandoned by their sensei and willing to talk about their session.

"Taijutsu," Temari explained, "with an emphasis on strength building."

"Zabuza-sensei calls it the lessons on 'how to hit things hard,'" Naruto chirped. There was a very distinct footprint in the center of his jacket. "It's loads of fun. He kicked me into a tree!"

"Congratulations?" Sai offered. Naruto beamed.

"What'd the captain do with you?" Sakura asked curiously.

"Ninjutsu," Sai answered. "He tested our chakra nature and taught us each a jutsu of our elemental affinity."

"He wants us to call him Kakashi-sensei," Sasuke added.

Sakura looked at him like he'd sprouted an extra head. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," said Gaara, looking profoundly disturbed.

"That's super weird," Naruto said. "He's the captain."

"Technically, he's the commander," Temari corrected absently.

Sakura brushed her gloved hands off on her pants. "I don't have any rotations with him," she said nervously. "Think I should still call him that?"

"I have two rotations with him," Naruto breathed. "I'm gonna have him four times a week." He gasped. "Does that mean he's my double sensei? Should I call him Sensei-sensei?"

Sakura, who was closest, cuffed him upside the head so Sasuke didn't have to as Temari sighed tolerantly and said, "Call him whatever he wants to be called, and don't call him anything he hasn't asked you to call him."

"Hey," said Sasuke. "Did you know he trained Neko-sensei?"

"The captain?" asked Sakura, startled. "He doesn't really seem like a teacher. Just, you know. Like a captain."

"When they made him take leave from active duty," Sasuke clarified, and that got a round of nods from the others.

"Ohh," said Naruto. "That makes sense, then. He must be a really good teacher!"

Sasuke and Sai exchanged looks. "He has knowledge of a large number of ninjutsu that he is able to pass on," Sai allowed.

Temari raised her eyebrows as she turned away. "Let's get the others," she said. "I want to know what Juu-sensei's teaching them."

The last team was in a clearing on the far side of the stream, Neji and Hinata trading open-handed blows back and forth without chakra as Haku spoke quietly with Shisui on the edges of the trees.

"Hey!" called Shisui across the clearing. Haku turned around and gave them a wave. "Team and inter-team exercises are after dinner!" But his tone was light and teasing rather than amondishing, so Sasuke and the others didn't bother retreating.

Neji and Hinata spun apart, and Neji flashed a signal that had them both straightening out of their respective stances.

"Hey," said Sakura, crossing over to them. "You guys doing taijutsu too?"

"Yes," Neji agreed. "Kyuu-sama and I are most useful as sensors, but with our doujutsu, the Jyuuken is a weapon too powerful for us not to hone."

"Kakashi-sensei informed us he would be teaching us both taijutsu and ninjutsu in our rotation," Sai volunteered. "It appears that this rotation include taijutsu for all of us."

Neji and Hinata both looked at him like he was crazy. "Did you just - what did you call him?" Neji said.

"He asked us to call him 'Sensei'," Sasuke explained, enjoying the increasingly incredulous looks on their faces. "Since he's teaching now."

"Sen...sei," Gaara agreed with zero confidence.

"They're not lying," Temari said with certain resignation. "As far as I can tell, at least."

"Anyways," said Sasuke. "Who's on dinner duty?"

Sasuke was on dinner duty - Sasuke and Sai, who was promptly demoted to assistant by Sasuke due to the authority granted to him by virtue of being a better cook. "Start with chopping the cabbage and the nakaimo," Sasuke directed, dumping an entire sack of flour into their second-biggest pot.

"What are we making?" Sai asked, setting out the vegetables on the counter in front of him.

"You're making okonomiyaki," Sasuke said, "which I'm seasoning for you. I'm making udon. And then you'll finish it and I'll do the soup."

"Hai," Sai agreed, not offended by the very blatant hint that he couldn't be trusted to finish a dish by himself.

Sasuke left him to it and went back to his not-yet dough. There was something calming about it, as settling as performing a kata or sharpening weapons or mastering a new ninjutsu.

He didn't have any sort of spoon or spatula strong enough to mix a dough that thick so he did it by hand, rolling up his sleeves to the elbow and plunging his forearms into the mess of water and flour and salt. At last it rolled smooth and elastic under his hands, and neither dough nor flour stuck to his skin when he let go. He threw a cover on over the pot and went to check on Sai.

Sai'd moved on from the vegetable chopping and mixed up the batter. Sasuke leaned around him and stuck a finger in the stuff and then in his mouth.

"I followed the recipe exactly," Sai said. "There should be no issues with the seasoning, if that is what you are concerned about."

"Too much salt if you're adding sauce later," Sasuke corrected, wiping his hand on his pants. "Cut in, like, another couple hundred grams of nakaimo and it'll be fine."

"This is the exact formula we followed the last time we made okonomiyaki." It was an observation and not a protest - Sai picked up another piece of the vegetable and a knife.

Sasuke shrugged. "I don't know how it works, I just fix the taste," he said, already distracted by the sauce mixture. It needed more sugar. And also more...ketchup.

After the sauce, the udon needed to be rolled out and cut. The broth needed to be seeped and boiled. The okonomiyaki needed to be fried. Naruto needed to be stopped from stealing the food before the actual meal.

"Would you back off?" Sasuke swiped at his teammate with his spatula as Sai fished another bowl of udon out of the pot of boiling water. "Set the table, if you have nothing better to do."

"I just want a taste," Naruto wheedled, dancing out of reach.

"Yeah, you'll get one at dinner," Sasuke muttered, menacing him with a carton of salt.

Naruto tracked it warily. Sasuke'd thrown one at him before and sprayed salt everywhere, which was both annoying and painful for everyone involved, and they both knew he'd do it again if Naruto kept pushing. "Fine," said Naruto, sticking out his tongue before retreating to the main room.

The captain didn't show up for dinner, but Zabuza-sensei did, as well as Shisui, who muttered something about skipping meals and force-feeding under his breath.

"I've got something to take care of in Command," Shisui said, tipping the dregs of his soup in his mouth as he stood. "Z, I'll see you at the meeting tonight. Kids - be good. Or don't get caught. Don't forget your drills and listen to Rei. Rei-chan, don't let them slack off."

"I won't," promised Temari as Naruto complained, "We're not little kids anymore," and Sakura chirped, "Bye, Sensei!" Gaara lifted one hand in a solemn wave. Zabuza-sensei grunted and reached for the plate of okonomiyaki, unimpressed with the world at large but especially Shisui.

Shisui slipped out the door with a stack of reports as thick as a kunai was long, and the seals pulsed with chakra as they activated behind him.

"For team training, how about we steal the sign off of that dumpling stand next to the ink store in the western district and stick it on the gates of one of those fancy clan compounds?" suggested Naruto brightly.

"And incite a second civil war?" Neji muttered. "I think not."

"I would prefer to maintain positive relations with that ink store," Sai added. "They have a wide range of products."

"Let's leave off giving Shisui-sensei a heart attack," Temari said, with a quick glance at Zabuza-sensei. "Save that for another time."

"Save that for never," Zabuza-sensei suggested under his breath. "You know who has to clean up after you pull that shit? If it's me, you know damn well it's coming out of your skin."

Sakura coughed. "Er, we won't." She didn't sound particularly sincere.

"Michishio," Gaara suggested meaningfully.

"Do not fucking assassinate a jounin for your teambuilding exercise," Zabuza-sensei growled. "I don't care how much of an asshole he is."

"M-maybe j-just a t-tracking exercise?" Hinata ducked her head as soon as the words left her mouth.

"Tracking a jounin," Sai mused.

Sasuke let himself sink into the easy conversation of the pack, the cadence of the evening. This wasn't the same as it was before, like surviving a life-threatening attack but with a crippling injury that he could never quite push out of the edges of his mind. Time didn't wait, or maybe it was Sasuke, stumbling forward with no way to stop.

That was fine. This was his normal, now.

The first real storm hit just over a week later in the middle of the night. The wind shrieking outside woke Sasuke from a dreamless sleep, dragging him back to consciousness. Haku shivered uncontrollably against his side, his hands fisted in the blankets as his eyes moved fitfully beneath the lids.

Sasuke reached over drowsily and patted at Haku's shoulder. The cold would never kill him, but it could make him very uncomfortable. Haku came awake instantly, muscles relaxing as his conscious mind registered the temperature problem and fixed it, and the tremors stopped. "Did something happen?" he murmured.

Sasuke squinted back at him through the gloom and waved his hand a little at the ceiling. "Thought I heard something. But it's just the wind."

"Ah," said Haku. "It sounds like a blizzard."

It did sound like those snowstorms that had swept through San's mother's forest, but those had felt impersonal, imperious. This one, even though it was kind of stupid to describe storms as having intent, felt cruel. A killer of all, and not just the unwary.

Haku's breathing evened out as he drifted back to sleep. He wasn't shivering now, but Sasuke shifted to press him into Temari, on his other side, because she tended to run warm. Naruto would be better, plus he slept like the dead, but Sasuke wasn't too sure where he was in the pile. Probably near Gaara on the far side, since Gaara was a lot more blatant about wanting to be near a source of heat.

He lay awake until the dawn, listening to the almost-silent breathing of the pack as the wind faded to a low howl. Outside, Zabuza-sensei's rough growl joined the captain's voice as they moved around the room outside, and then Shisui's lighter tones. Sasuke debated for a minute before sliding out of the blankets, finding his sandals and his cloak, and padding out to join them.

"Look who's up with the fucking sun," Zabuza-sensei grunted when he saw Sasuke. "Bread in the kitchen. Eat."

The captain gave him an absent nod. There were maps and scribbled notes and books spread out on the table in front of him and three ninken sprawled at his back and under the table. Pakkun, perched on the table on one of the open books, jabbed a paw at one of the maps and muttered something under his breath. The captain hummed in response and scribbled in the closest notebook.

"Ah, good morning Shi-kun," said Shisui. He was already dressed in Kiri chuunin-jounin greys and a flak jacket, furred cloak, and his half-mask.

"Where're you going?" Sasuke asked over his shoulder, slicing off a piece from one of the loaves in the kitchen.

"I've been filling in for Unit 13," Shisui answered lightly. "Z and I are gonna go do unit check-ins. It sounds like the storm's over, but maybe you all can do some self-studying inside first anyways. Z should be back in time to do your lessons, because he likes to foist his work off onto his second."

Zabuza-sensei grumbled wordlessly in response. "Slack off and you'll pay for it, boy," he threatened. He opened the door and glared at the solid wall of snow that greeted him on the other side. "Gods damn it," he snapped. "Haku! Come take care of this."

Haku had a preternatural sense for anything involving Zabuza, and he stumbled out of the sleeping quarters still mostly asleep in ten seconds flat, his usual grace coming back in fits and starts. He trudged straight to the snow and stuck both his hands in up to the wrist. A rush of chakra like icy wind swept through the room, and the packed snow billowed out of the doorway, opening up a path taller than Zabuza-sensei. It was still snowing white flakes blown nearly sideways by the wind, and some of them drifted in to land in Haku's loose hair.

Haku stifled a yawn and shuffled away from the open door, his eyes half closed. "Go back to sleep, kid," said Zabuza-sensei, and stomped out into the storm.

"Bye, Taichou, Shi-kun. Thanks, Ichi-kun," Shisui said cheerfully before he followed. The door swung shut behind him.

Haku stood for a moment staring blankly at the door, swaying slightly, and meandered back to the sleeping den. Sasuke was too restless to sleep again, so he took his bread and picked a textbook at random and took himself to a table on the far side of the room. Guruko peeled away from the group of ninken around the captain, wriggling under the table and sprawling by Sasuke instead. Sasuke eyed the hound, but Guruko just thumped his tail in greeting and lay his head down on his paws.

They all ignored each other, which suited Sasuke just fine.

Maybe an hour later, sharp movement caught Sasuke's eye as the captain turned towards the door sharply, and his ninkens' heads all jerked in unison, ears pricked. Guruko whined softly in the back of his throat and abandoned Sasuke for the captain's side once again. "Hm," said the captain, and when he saw Sasuke watching, added, "No threat. It's for me."

He definitely wasn't acting like it was an emergency. The captain vanished back into his room and came back out in full armor plus a cloak, and minus all of his hounds save Urushi. Sasuke ducked his head in a nod as the pair slipped out and went back to his book.

Temari was the next of the pack to wake, wrapped in two cloaks. "Did you sleep?" she asked, her voice still groggy.

"Yeah," said Sasuke. He jerked his chin towards the kitchen. "There's bread."

Temari hummed but sat down across from him anyways, pulling a pencil and a book on grammar and written composition closer to her. The same easy silence fell between them. Sasuke dutifully copied a diagram of Kiri's northern islands.

The door flew open abruptly and Sasuke and Temari both jumped, lunging for their weapons. Shisui burst in, his cloak swirling around him with the wind that billowed in. His hands were empty of weapons or chakra but his eye locked on Sasuke, ignoring Temari's wary, "Sensei?" as he strode directly for Sasuke.

Alarmed, Sasuke barely had time to stand before Shisui seized his arm in an iron grip and dragged him towards the door, and Temari cried, "Hey!" and sprang to her feet. Sasuke reached instinctively for a kunai, twisting out of his cousin's grip just as Shisui shouldered them out the door.

"Watch the others, Rei," Shisui ordered without a backwards glance.

"What're you doing?" Sasuke demanded, sidestepping quickly as the door clicked shut behind them.

His cousin was tense, nearly rigid, and coiled on a hair trigger. A storm brewed in Shisui's eye, cold and tumultuous. "What Itachi did was unforgivable," he said, "so I'm going to do something he'll never forgive me for. I'm going to tell you the truth."

Sasuke took a step back, alarmed at the manic light in his cousin's eye, and brought his arm up defensively in front of him. "What?" he demanded. "What do you mean?"

Shisui grabbed his arm before he could flinch back, dragging him into a particularly overwhelming shunshin. Sasuke hit the ground on his side, skidding out of Shisui's grasp when his cousin landed in a crouch. They'd gone clear across the village to the cliffs overlooking the training grounds. It wasn't snowing anymore, but the wind was still frigid against his face. "Cousin, what - "

Shisui snapped, "Quiet." He slammed a paper seal down between them, and a bubble-like dome expanded around them, glowing white-gold around them. For a moment, he went preternaturally still and silent, and warily, Sasuke waited. Shisui took a deep breath and said, "Itachi staged the Sanbi kidnapping attempt. He never wanted to succeed; he planned to get caught."

"So?" Sasuke staggered to his feet, retreating a couple steps backwards to the edges of the seal's range. "He - he needed a distraction, right? If there's a danger of a bijuu getting loose, there won't be manpower to chase him, and it lured in you and the captain. You two were the most likely to stop him. Just good strategy, right?"

"Sasuke-kun," Shisui said, reaching out to grab him by the shoulders, and Sasuke leaned back, unnerved, but wasn't fast enough to dodge. "Did the captain tell you that Itachi used Tsukuyomi on him? Did he tell you what he showed him?"

Sasuke frowned, shrugging as best he could. "Uh, he told me Itachi used a genjutsu to make him relive his life a thousand times. The captain figured it was to smokescreen the weeks they were at the Mainland, because he let something about his plans slip."

Shisui bared his teeth in a grin. "Yeah, it wasn't just something, it was the whole thing. They planned it together. They arranged it so Itachi could reverse the effects with a coded message by one of his crows once the captain was beyond suspicion for his involvement."

"What?" Sasuke demanded, rearing back. "The captain's a double agent?"

"And afterwards, he sent that crow to me," Shisui said, triumphant and terrible and furious. "The captain isn't the agent. Itachi is."

That couldn't make sense. That made complete sense.

That was...insanity. That was a sudden, mad clarity.

Itachi was an agent. Itachi was undercover?

Itachi wasn't a traitor.

That knocked the breath from his lungs, his vision blurring at the edges and staying so even when he blinked. "Why - why would he - why wouldn't he - ?" He forced the words out with an uncooperative tongue, his thoughts flying faster than he could put speech to. "He told us - the, the Clan - "

He didn't like the way Shisui was looking at him, with a combination of pity and fury. "Because," Shisui spat. "Knowledge is dangerous and knowledge is power. By telling you his role in the Clan's downfall, he absolved you of caring about him. By keeping his mission from you, he tried to protect you from both those who would kill him for what he is doing and those who would kill him for what they believe he is doing. That knowledge is dangerous, both for him and for you. It's safer for you not to know."

The wind rushed sharply at Sasuke, buffeting him as he stood stunned, and its ferocity stung his eyes as Shisui's words sank in.

"He wanted me to believe a lie," Sasuke said, his mind empty but for the rush of his own blood to the tempo of his pulse. And then the next realization, "He wanted me to hate him."

"Yes," said Shisui, reaching to him more gently now, and only when he had Sasuke's face pressed against the shoulder of his flak jacket did Sasuke realize he was crying, hot tears soaking into the cloth covering of his cousin's armor. "That was cruel of him. That, I won't forgive him for." He grimaced, the muscles of his neck tensing. "And because he made me his secret-keeper, to him, telling you this is the cruelest betrayal I could commit."

"He didn't want me to know," Sasuke said, the thought running over and over and over in his mind. "He didn't want me to know."

"Tell me right now. Sasuke, tell me right now if you can't keep this secret," Shisui said fiercely, taking hold of Sasuke's head in his hands and forcing him to look him in the eye. "I'll take the knowledge from you. You won't have to - to carry this."

"No! I can," Sasuke insisted, suddenly desperate, suddenly terrified to lose even a piece of his brother. "Please. I have to. Shisui, I have to."

His cousin met his gaze, long and searching. "Okay," Shisui whispered, tugging him back down to his shoulder again. "Okay."

"I hate this," Sasuke confessed, and that felt like a revelation. "I hate that he did this to me, there's no excuse."

"But you love him," Shisui said quietly, and Sasuke's fingers tightened on his armor.

"Yeah." Sasuke's voice wavered and broke. "Yeah."

Sasuke didn't want to get up. So he didn't.

"Shi, breakfast's ready. Let's go," said Temari, tapping the wall on her way out.

Sasuke closed his eyes and ignored her. He wasn't sleeping, just...drifting. He could hear the others crowding around the tables for breakfast outside, the muted clamor of chopsticks against bowls and even quieter murmur of conversation.

Temari's clothes rustled as returned. Probably for her tessen, which he knew without opening his eyes was leaned up against the wall somewhere to his left. "Shi," she repeated, disbelief lacing her voice. "Shi, you're not up? We're starting morning warm-ups."

So? Morning warm-ups weren't mandatory.

"Shi." Temari shook his shoulder gently and he snarled wordlessly, batting her off as she recoiled in surprise and wariness. "Shi!" she amondished, scowling.

Sasuke didn't care. He subsided into the blankets.

"Rei-chan?" Shisui. "Is something wrong?"

"It's Shi," Temari answered, her voice fading as she left the room. "He won't get up. He snapped at me."

"He's just grumpy," Naruto said uncertainly. "Right?"

"Is he sick?" Shisui was coming closer now, and Sasuke gritted his teeth.

"No, he's just - "

"What if he...?"

"Do you think - "

"Leave him." That was the captain, cutting through the mess of voices.

"Taichou," said Shisui reproachfully. There was a brief silence where the captain was probably giving him a look. The captain had yet to lose an argument that way. Shisui raised his voice again to the pack. "Aren't you all going to morning warm-ups?"

"Sensei!" Sakura protested, but the outcry was only her and Naruto's wordless exclamation, and the mute displeasure of the others.

"Now," ordered Shisui, and the almost-silent shuffle of the pack preceded the door closing behind them.

Sasuke was selfishly vindictive, but it passed like a breath and he just felt tired again. He closed his eyes.

There were footsteps behind him, too light to be a person. Sasuke ignored them. It was probably just Haku's rabbit -

A small, warm body wriggled its way between Sasuke's arm and the blankets, and his eyes shot open as he jerked away from the captain's quietest ninken, who gave him a sleepy stare as he settled in the warm divot. "What are you doing?" Sasuke demanded, the words coming slow and slurred as he rolled away. "Leave me alone."

Predictably, Bisuke ignored him, tucking his paws under himself and nestling down deeper into the blankets.

Did the captain know what his ninken was doing? Was this on purpose?

Sasuke decided he didn't care. He was too tired to care. Bisuke could do what he wanted; Sasuke was going to sleep. Sasuke rolled over so he had his back to the hound and let his eyes drift closed once again.

He must have fallen asleep, because he peeled open his eyes with great effort when he heard the door open again. It was the pack; he recognized the cadences of their voices. It'd be lessons now, and Sasuke'd never skipped out on lessons on purpose, but he didn't really feel like getting up. So he didn't.

A muted grumble at his back told him Bisuke was still there. The ninken's senses were sharper than his, and Sasuke doubted he'd let him be attacked without warning. He slept again.

"Shi-kun, lunch is ready," Haku called through the doorway, stirring him from his half-slumber.

Spicy fish stew, which Haku made best out of the entire pack, Sasuke included. But Sasuke was hollow, not hungry, so he didn't move. The smell wasn't as tantalizing as it usually was, just a ghost of temptation. Haku didn't press, and despite the fog of discussion that he couldn't quite make out or couldn't quite care to make out, nobody else tried to get him up.

The faucet creaked and the rumble of the old pipes stirred him again as whoever was on cleanup duty washed up, and the door whispered open again as the rest of the pack went for training.

"Shi!" Naruto exclaimed, startling him. Sasuke shot upright despite himself, flailing in the tangle of blankets. Bisuke made an offended grumble as he was dislodged, clambering to his paws and slinking off under the closest bunks.

Blearily, Sasuke glared.

It was just him and Sakura in there - Team Byakko. "You - are you okay?" Sakura asked tremulously.

This again. Every time someone asked him, he thought about it again, and now the knowledge of what Itachi had done - to him, for him - weighed on him so much more heavily. "I'm fine," Sasuke said, too tired for his anger to stir, and dropped back down into the nest of blankets that had accumulated in the center of the room. It seemed to have gotten bigger since he last woke up, but the only one who'd been in there was Bisuke. "Leave me alone."

"Sasuke," Naruto said, his eyes wide and blue and sad and horribly knowing. "You're not." Curse whatever god of luck had decided that now should be the time Naruto became observant. Though, to be fair, sleeping half the day away was a pretty big hint.

"You can tell us," Sakura added, hovering just behind Naruto's shoulder. "We're your team, we just want to help. Tell us what to do."

And…they were his team. They were his friends. They were pack, they were family. Even after Itachi, he trusted them as much as he could anyone. He trusted the pack, because for years that'd been the only way for them to survive.

But Sakura was strangely fragile these days when nobody was watching, and Naruto could barely keep his own name a secret. Sasuke was just a little tired today. There wasn't anything he couldn't handle and what could either of them do to help anyways?

"I'm having a hard time," he admitted just when he'd decided not to say anything. He paused, part of his mind frantically running damage control while another screeched in alarm and dismay. "Just - with my brother and everything that happened," he said, his scramble to cover completely betrayed by his own mouth.

Sakura nodded though she couldn't ever hope to understand, her eyes serious even as she clamped a preemptive hand over Naruto's mouth.

"I just need to work through it all," Sasuke finished lamely after half a minute where he fished for something to say.

"We all have things to work through," Sakura said, and since he knew what she'd gone through, since he'd been there for much of it, that…helped. Like struggling alone in solidarity. "There's no hurry. Shizune-sensei told me it's better to process and confront how we feel about things instead of letting it fester, even if it takes a while."

Sasuke resisted the urge to ask, how's that working out for you because she was trying and he wasn't cruel.

"We'll be here if you ever need anything," Naruto said earnestly, peeling Sakura's hand away from his mouth and leaning in so close their noses nearly touched. "We're always watching your back!"

Yeah, a little too closely. "I'll be okay, usuratonkachi," Sasuke muttered, shoving him over. Naruto hurled a pillow at him. Sasuke caught it and had it tucked under his chest in a heartbeat, daring Naruto to do something about it with his eyes.

"Hey!" Naruto cried, outraged, flailing without actually touching him.

Idiot. Sasuke snuggled his stolen pillow closer. If he didn't want Sasuke to keep it, he shouldn't have thrown it.

Sakura eased down to lie next to him and smiled, unbearably sad and radiantly happy at once. "We're going to be fine," she said. "All of us."

'Fine' wasn't going to happen so easily. But there were moments of peace before then.

"Get up," Temari ordered in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, after three and a half years of being in charge, she wasn't used to taking no for an answer. Sasuke defying her once had made her even more determined to make sure there wasn't a repeat.

"Guh," said Sasuke. It was still dark outside, darker even then when they'd gone to sleep what had to have been three or four hours ago.

"What is the time?" Sai asked, sounding about as scattered as Sasuke felt.

"Two," answered Haku, voice rough. Sakura let out a groan of distress.

"We're going on a run," Temari said. "Cloaks and masks, everyone."

The grumbles of the pack simmered down. Sasuke wove around Naruto in the dark as Sakura took a flying leap up to her bunk to retrieve her mask. "Juu-sensei said we're not supposed to use the bone-masks in the Village anymore," she said primly, though that clearly wasn't stopping her.

"Bah," said Gaara dismissively.

The outside room was dark and empty except for Urushi, who was sitting near the outside door with his muzzle pointed towards the outside. His ears swivelled when the pack filed into the room, but he didn't otherwise acknowledge them. Sasuke still paused, Hinata and Sai bunching up behind him, but Temari motioned them onwards with her hand as she strode past without hesitation.

The winter moon was cold and bright in clear skies. Urushi slipped out after them, joining Sai at the rear of the pack. Adrenaline buzzed through Sasuke's veins already from the threat of discovery and the anticipation of the run.

Temari broke into a sprint and Sasuke chased after her instinctively. With a quiet whoop, Naruto followed close on his heels.

And then they were all running, the entire pack streaming across the surface of the snow as the moonlight glimmered off the white bone of their wolf-faces and grey-brown fur of their cloaks. The trees blurred past as they hit the training grounds, and Sasuke swerved through their trunks, leapt a low bush that rose in his path. The air bit painfully into his lungs, cold and fresh and sharp.

Someone was laughing breathlessly - Sakura, he thought - and it was bright and exhilarated and fed into the rest of the pack. At the head, Temari swerved sharply towards the encircling mountains, and the rest of them gladly followed.

At their rear, Urushi raised up a haunting howl, and Naruto joined in with his own, one that faded into helpless giggles. Then it was Gaara with a growl that wasn't quite human, that raised the hairs on the back of Sasuke's neck.

The wind dragged the hood back from Sasuke's head, tugging sticky fingers through his hair as they climbed. He fell in stride with Hinata, whose legs were shorter but who took quick leaps to cover more ground, then fell back to join Haku's easy lope.

The climb grew impossibly steep, and Temari surged upwards ahead of them, catching herself on the sheer surface with chakra. Sasuke followed in a bound, then snapped out a hand to catch Naruto by the collar when his teammate slipped on a patch of loose gravel. Haku did the same on the other side, and together they hauled Naruto up and let go as soon as he found his footing, and up they climbed, higher and higher into the mountains.

Sasuke was lightheaded by the time Temari drew to a stop, on a flat outcropping at the top of a sheer drop. Neji skidded to a halt beside him, and for a moment, all nine of them plus Urushi stood in silence in the snow, the blood hot in their veins and their adrenaline still rushing. Sakura brushed against him as she stepped closer to look over the edge, and Naruto's warmth pressed against his side, for once silent.

This was enemy territory, but at this moment, surrounded by his pack, with his chakra sparking just under his skin, Sasuke felt safe. He felt strong.

He could see the entire Inner Village from there, the golden glow of streetlights twinkling in the dark and the starry sky yawning endlessly above. The moon was two nights from full, but lit up the snow blanketing the slopes and the training grounds and the streets far below.

"Beautiful," Hinata breathed, the word all but stolen by the wind.

It was ridiculous, to give such qualities to the inanimate night, but Sasuke found that he couldn't disagree.

It was a new day, and he and Shisui were alone at the cliffs again, the same spot they'd been at before. The sun was breaking through the clouds, high above, and Sasuke could feel their weak rays on his face.

Out beyond the ocean was Hi no Kuni, where a traitor and a liar and a murderer presided over the Village of his birth. There was Konoha, the home he'd lost. There was a clan's worth of graves to mourn there, and that knowledge was a heavy stone in Sasuke's heart, but still -

Below them, in Kiri's Inner Village, was his pack, his Yorozoku, safe and well-fed and stronger every day. They weren't running anymore; they were fighting.

Somewhere out there was Itachi, fighting a lonely war to keep them - to keep Sasuke - safe.

Despite everything, Itachi shouldn't have to be alone.

Hanabi-ha had made it through one war and come out the other side still fighting. They had allies, supplies, and space enough to plan their counterattack. When they retook Konoha, when at last their own long war was over, Sasuke could go find his brother.

"Do you forgive him?" Shisui asked quietly. There was a pendant of dark stone hanging around his neck, the one he'd given Itachi for his sixteenth birthday. _Heiwa_ , it read, his brother's greatest wish - peace.

Sasuke watched the wind rustle the tips of the trees far below their feet. The first leaves were starting to sprout, the beginnings of spring after a brutal winter. "No," he said with certainty. "But I will."

They survived being hunted, they survived a war, and they would survive the next. And every day until that time came that they could finally go home and put down their weapons in peace and know that they were safe, like the sun after every dark twilight, they would rise.

* * *

A/N: This is the final chapter of Rise. There will be an epilogue after this, but the main story is over now. Thank you everyone who's been reading and leaving comments! I'll be taking a short hiatus, but the sequel to Rise will be called Children of Empire - make of that what you will :)


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